I agree, although I think that's always been true to some extent, so I don't know if I'd add "these days". There are stories going back centuries of famous professors who were also famously jerks and horrible mentors. Some people are great at advancing math or chemistry (or [insert subject]) but really bad at mentoring new students. Other people are great at teaching the current knowledge and mentoring but not particularly amazing at advancing it. Others are great at one-on-one mentoring and research but kind of meh at teaching in a big lecture-hall setting. Still others can give great, engaging lectures to large audiences but are not so good at one-on-one mentorship. Top universities of course want to claim they're full of the unicorns, professors who are top-5% in all of: disciplinary research and interpersonal kindness and large-classroom teaching and 1-on-1 mentorship. But the odds are any individual will not be equally good at all of those tasks.
Totally agreed. I have long been trying to figure out how an incoming graduate student may assess the quality of a professor beyond his academic publications and asking people who work with him. I have come to the conclusion that the best predictor is reputation amongst peers. I may be wrong here, but from what I have seen it usually is the most accurate. The issue is that there is no review site for professors outside of their teaching inside of classrooms. Would be very helpful in selecting mentors, imo.
Maybe even a matching market, much like medical residency in the US.
Yeah. I think getting plugged into the current grad students' social network and hearing about their profs is going to be good information. Of course, that is hard to do if you are coming across the country to grad school.
Another thing to watch out for is to make a cold and cynical calculation about whether or not the PI will still be there when you are done with your thesis. My brother-in-law had his PI and another member of his committee leave 1 year short of his thesis being done. Fortunately, they both made arrangements to continue on his committee so that he could actually graduate, and he did, and has maintained good relationships with them.
On the other side... I know a guy who was not nearly as far along. His PI left, triggering others, and that sub-group in the department more-or-less collapsed. He was on the opposite coast doing a summer internship while that all went down. So.... "Heyyyyy, my internship is up in a couple of weeks, do you think I could go full time?"
It's not an uncommon story: My wife's PI got cancer. 3 years in. In her case, she just abandoned the whole thing. A friend of mine's PI instead moved to UCLA from San Antonio, and didn't raise pay a cent, or provide relocation assistance, so people had to follow him. Given the fun rental agreements in Texas, leaving a lease mid way still makes you have to pay for it unless someone else occupies the apartment. This made my friend end up in a nice, multi thousand dollar hole. She did get her Ph.D, but seeing the life of the postdoc, she gave up on that route herself, and now teaches English in Japan, crushed by student debt.
Between all the stories like that I have, and the relatively low improvement in outcomes when things really work out, I am so very happy I ignored academia and went straight to industry.
