Slashdot Mirror
Finding a Research Mentor?
bsomerville writes "As an aspiring social scientist preparing to apply to Ph.D. programs, I'm keen to find a faculty mentor somewhere in North America who shares my research interests. This is more difficult than I thought it would be. While links to program websites are readily available, I'm surprised to find no comprehensive collection of faculty research interests in my field (clinical psychology). Instead this information is buried several levels down in each university website. Is this a common problem across all fields? Is there some inherent reason why no wiki-type Web resource exists to meet this need? It seems like a text-searchable database could be built fairly quickly and maintained by users, saving countless aspiring grad students thousands of clicks through university websites."
Use ISI Web of Knowledge. Search for the terms you are interested in. Find papers. Sort by date. Who's publishing in your field these days? This is who you want to talk to.
keep up with the good work
My research interests aren't immutable, and I don't entirely know what they are. If I run across a good idea, it can become a research interest. So, (a) who has the time to write such a web page, and (b) it would be wrong anyway.
Also, research interests are (at least partially) an administrative fake. Administrators and research councils like departments to have "research programs" (God only knows why...). Department heads respond to this and ask professors for their "research interests". Professors look at their recent publications and write a one-paragraph plausible story about what their research interests must have been. But it's all after-the-fact and (as the financial people say) past performance has no relationship to future research.
I speak as someone who makes their living doing research.
Great idea. Why don't you start it?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If you are trying to find a mentor in any scientific field, you don't go looking for "lists" of interests. I don't even know what that refers to. You find recently published primary literature in areas you have interest in, and speak to those authors. This helps you find people who are actively working in the field you seek to be a part of. Even if the authors themselves aren't right for you, they are more likely to know other people in the field than anyone else.
Frankly, I'm kind of shocked. You are applying to PhD programs, but don't currently know any scientists in the field? What about at your undergraduate institution? How did you get interested in social science without reading any papers?
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Sometimes it's necessary to stop looking for answers on the internet and start doing plain, old-fashioned manual research. Have you asked the lecturers / staff at your existing college - they must have some contacts, to have taught you in the first place. How about looking up the authors of papers that interest you and actually talking to them.
get out there and network.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Yes.
Some departments do a very good job of organizing their faculty lists by research interest. Some don't. Unfortunately, it's almost completely up to whoever the department hires to do their web site design (or they use a school-wide template, but in that case, it's up to whoever designs the template.) AFAIK, there's no real standard in any field -- not even in CS, which seems like it would be the most likely place for such a standard to emerge.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One way to determine what professors might share interests of yours would be to review books and articles you have read on the subject and pay close attention to the cited works. Who writes recent and interesting articles on a topic which excites you? Who has unpublished works in progress which are cited in current literature? If you have a clear conception of your research interests this should not be hard at all. Google scholar can help you here, as you can search by citation and by author (though the author search fails gracelessly when faced w/ abbreviations and authors with the same name). Alternately you can search Web of Science if you have an institutional account or look around for a recent lit review article. When you find a potential match, look for a few things. First make sure they are actually teaching at that school and not on some long term sabbatical or recently moved to some fancier university. Second check their current PhD students to see if they are already supervising a bunch. They don't need to be on your committee in order to mentor you, but it helps. Third (and this relates to the "don't bother"), make sure they are at a good school. Pedigree matters a LOT in academia, don't believe anyone who tells you different. A good dissertation is critical, but an average dissertation from a Harvard PhD gets you a lot further than an above average dissertation from State U. (assuming State U. isn't a public ivy)--that doesn't even begin to touch the non-signaling benefits of going to a good school. Of course "good school" is field dependent. But in most cases the top 10 and even the top 20 are usually the same.
This is all assuming you want to get that PhD in order to teach someplace or do fieldwork. If you just want to learn, disregard all that stuff above about good schools. A lot of those top schools are pretty miserable for grad students if your goal is to learn.
However, if you want to get placed somewhere good, then you can avoid this tedious search and simply apply to the best schools out there and hope you get in a top 10-20 institution. It's really mercenary, but that's how it works.
As medical doctors says here in Denmark, Psychology has no proven effect.
All medical care must be tested before it is approved for wider deployment. Psychology has no clinical tests proving it is significantly better than medicine, talking to friends or nothing at all. Psychologists do not have any interest in proof that they are worthless.
If you are aspiring for a PhD, you should already have a good grasp at researching papers and conference proceedings. Actually, should probably have already done that part... From these papers and conference proceedings, you can quickly identify those working in your field of interest and get a (partial) big picture of who's doing what where. Limiting you search to the last 36 months might be helpful.
This is obviously not a flawless method. It is time consuming and will only give you a partial picture (you'll probably not read every publication made in the last 3 years in all journals). You might also miss very interesting groups that publish in less known papers. That said, you have to choose wisely where you will focus your energy. Not working in your field, I can't help there, but as an aspiring PhD, you surly can find this information around you.
Peer contacts are also very helpful. PhD, post-docs and professors where you currently are are likely to have a good intuition on where to find this information, which papers to parse and, maybe, who to contact directly.
Forget about faculty websites. Forget about research grants (they are highly misleading).
I'm starting graduate school as a biology major this fall and I feel your pain. My suggestion is to network within your undergraduate institution. Ask your former professors where they went to grad school, perhaps they still have some connections. Also, if there are any professional conferences you can attend within your field of study, it would offer you a great opportunity to find out who is doing research in your area of interest and then making contact with that particular researcher.
Also, meeting potential PIs in person will generally increase your chances of getting accepted to a particular PhD program, as opposed to making contact by just email or phone. Good luck!
Literature search. Scholar + last 3 years (last year if you're in a high publishing field).
"saving countless aspiring grad students thousands of clicks through university websites."
Yeah, that's what professors live for, making their drudges (aka doc/post doc students) lives easier.
I recently realized that I have a professional mission: to build web-based information systems which expose structured, curated, metadata-rich information in easily searchable and browseable formats. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
What informs my mission is how many abysmally awful websites are still in existence presenting unstructured, unorganized, confusing, conflicting, outdated, or just plain misleading information.
I won't name the university that I've worked for; but it's a model of out-of-control bureaucracy and informational confusion. They have a gigantic information problem, which goes well beyond failing to provide/expose the kind of useful information that you're describing. That would be wonderfully useful. They're not even scratching the surface yet. And that's a pity.
Websites are treated as desktop publishing tasks. They're being handed to the secretaries, with minimal supervision. (Not picking on secretaries - just acknowledging the situation.)
It's gotten so bad that I now see it as positive if a website even bothers to make downloadable PDF's available. At least they're trying.
Until you posted it here that is and basement-dwellers everywhere scurried off to launch their own versions. Now a new problem... searching all the competing mentor finders. Now if only someone built a meta-search to search them all...
The whole world isn't neatly chunked into convenient web pages ready for Google or a wiki to make available. Sometimes you actually have to work, read, and research rather than relying on someone else to do the work for you and make it available.
This goes triply for someone who is ready to start PhD work and making 'original contributions to knowledge'.
If you aren't already familiar with the papers, journals, conferences, etc.. in your purported field of interest and who is regularly publishing, presenting, and being cited - you aren't ready to do PhD level work.
The reason these things are buried is the new corporate design shiny website mania. Often the research groups have their own website with really useful information hidden on some badly linked server, while the university website's responsibles want to have shiny pictures of happy black people that have discovered the cure for cancer in hyped press releases, and put corporate design issues before usability.
searches is just part of the process, so get used to it, kid? Perhaps that is true currently; but what a waste of valuable time that represents.
Can you imagine a world where the process of research is streamlined using *existing* information science technologies to greatly accelerate scholarly research?
I've already built systems like that. And they're wonderful.
At Ph.D. prep level you should be reading research papers/journal articles to work out who's doing interesting work. You should also have networked in your undergrad and formed connections to people who can provide you with interesting opportunities in exchange for your hard work.
You certainly should not be dreaming of searchable dataases, trawling university web sites or posting to ask slashdot. That you are doing this does not bode well for your ability to complete a Ph.D.
By the way, I have no idea about psychology but preprint articles in Physics and Astronomy can be found on the net at arxiv.org. Since the journals tend to try to restrict publication for their own profits these days (espeically in medical sciences), you may need to find a library or University that you can access that has research papers for your own field. Either way if you're not interested enough to read current research articles to determine who's doing interesting work, perhaps you should be thinking about something other than a doctorate.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Oh, and don't mind all those comments chiding you for not knowing anything about the area you're planning to specialize in. It's not exactly a point in your favor, but I've seen many aspiring Ph.D. students don't know who is who in the research area that's caught their interest, and they usually don't know much about the state of play in that area either (which is what they will find out in the first 6 months of their Ph.D. training). It will definitely add to their workload but that's why doing a Ph.D means specializing in a specific area.
While it's entirely possible that your knowledge of the field in which you hope to obtain a doctorate is mature enough that you should be asking this kind of question, the fact that you have to ask it at all makes me think that this isn't so. Doctoral research and theses usually explore an extremely narrow topic within a much broader discipline. If your interests are so developed that you already know the subject of your doctoral thesis, then how could you have acquired the necessary knowledge of the field without working with relevant scholars—or at least reading their work? Had you done that, you would know exactly who your mentor should be. But then that would mean that you had already done what you are supposed to spend your first couple of years of graduate study doing: learning about the field that you have chosen to specialize in, and identifying a particular interest that you wish to pursue in a thesis.
In my experience, at least, graduate students usually spend the time allotted to the coursework portion of their Ph.D. curriculum gaining facility with the intellectual tools required by their chosen field, learning about this field in general, and most importantly, building relationships with teachers who might further their academic progress. Unless you are a very extraordinary and brilliant student, the normal procedure is not to find a mentor, and then enroll at the university where he is employed. Instead, you identify several universities where you think the interests of the faculty are reasonably compatible with your interests, and apply for admission. Once you are admitted, you work hard, and try to find a teacher with which you "click". Then you talk that teacher into sponsoring you as your dissertation adviser. If that happens, then all you have to do (in addition to the actual doctoral work) is put together a committee of faculty that get along with each other well enough that they can approve your dissertation without tearing each other's throats out in the process. (You have not seen vicious "office politics" until you have had to do with the academic version.)
Yes, of course you can better the odds in your favor. Find some papers you like, and write to the authors about how great their paper is. Tell them you're interested in pursuing graduate study at their institution, and see if you can get a reply. Don't be too forward; they don't know you at this stage, and are not likely to commit themselves to being your "mentor". The best you can hope for is a foot in the door, instead of a door in the face. Good luck!
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
thank god my research field is computing science itself. I can't remember when I had to do "plain, old-fashioned manual research" last time. And I am thankful for that!
In my opinion as a grad student in physics, no webpage, journal article or paper will get you to your advisor. I have studied under professor whose research interests were directly in line with mine and I would never do a PhD program under them. I couldn't work with them for years due to personality clashes. Similarly, I have read and done work under professors who are very good, spark my interests in physics further etc but were not in my field of interests.
Keep in mind your PhD advisor will be your advisor for the next 4 years (or however long it is in the social sciences...) Nothing beats face time and having someone you can talk to. (Okay, I admit your advisor won't be there when you actually need him but...you get the point.)
Thats what conferences, topical meetings, nights out at the pub etc. are for
Best of luck.
First of all, know your field. Second, why you look for someone who shares your exact research interest? It's dumb to look for someone who simply knows more than you about specific topics which you may be interested in. If you're doing a PhD, *you* are going to teach *them*. So ease off.
Your main goal is to find a good advisor, not someone with identical interests. A good advisor will help you do what you want to do, assuming they can. So your interests and theirs should merely be compatible, not identical.
You need a basic understanding of your field to begin. Read recent papers and look for good papers. Broadly follow many topics, adding more over time, starting now. You need to choose schools first, so figure out which ones have a few potential candidates. Then email some and ask if they're interested in a new student, and if so, call them on the telephone to talk. If they're indifferent, ask if they can suggest someone else who might be interested. This is a very personal choice, so you need to be personal and try to get to know people in the very limited time that you have.
Before you commit to a school, you should go there in person and meet if possible. It may not be possible, but try. You should also try to contact former students. Don't ask "was professor X any good?", ask "what was he like?".
Asking slashdot, just as bad as advice from 4chan
Try cos.com, it has an expertise database
Although more than half of all psychologists are clinical, the following explains why it's hard to find them:
* 65 percent worked in independent practices (46 percent in individual private practices and 19 percent in group private practices)
* 14 percent worked in hospitals
* Five percent worked in clinics
* Three percent worked in elementary / secondary schools
* Two percent or less worked in other settings, such as university counseling centers, criminal justice systems, rehabilitation facilities or other human service settings
Clinical is a treatment oriented field, not a research oriented. Other fields develop the tools that the clinicians use to fix b0rken br@nes. For instance, ADD is attentional, which is a subfield of cognitive psychology. They do research in order to uncover the underlying processes. To treat it with drugs requires research in psychopharmacology. To measure it requires training in methodology and imaging technology such as electrophysiology. You can work in any of those fields and contribute some meaningful work for clinicians to use, and that's just one example from the pages of the DSM.
You can go for a PhD in neuroscience and get training on many of the subfields. This probably opens up more doors than any other branch.
Most PsyD programs are clinical in nature. A n exception is (was?) the consortium to which Eastern Virginia Medical School belongs. It was intended to be research oriented, and at least was.
Clinicians are the ones who make the big bucks treating people. That would be the reason to stay in that field. If you intend to do research you're going to get paid about the same no matter what you're called, but researchers doing hiring assume clinicians are treatment oriented which is for the most part true, and so less likely to take you on in a research slot.
If you want to do research don't go looking at clinical programs (or at a particular location for that matter) and then for people within them. Go looking for people who are doing work you find exciting and go work for one of them regardless of what the program is called, even something other than psychology. Or go looking
at the research that interests you and then the people doing it and then the other stuff
I went the neuroscience route although there wasn't a neuroscience program in place there, only a 'psychological sciences' subfield that covered a lot of ground, and only the clinicians' dissertation said anything other than 'psychology (something or other focus)'. But we put together a program that required a chemistry professor on my committee. When they saw what I'd done in training, I was offered and walked into a job at NIH (non-competitive, just invited) and then Yale (same).
If you try to stick with clinical, when time comes to get a job they'll take one look, see 'clinical' and expect you to fill a slot that requires licensing as well as serving as a clinician where ever you're at. And that means a lot of face-to-face and a lot less research.
Still, Virginia Tech's clinical program requires a research project on par with the practicum in terms of effort and knowledge required. Something like that would help prepare you for doing research but wouldn't fix the problems about others' assumptions.
Most beginning psychology undergrads answer these two question thusly:
What kind of psychologist do you want to be?
Clinical.
Why?
To help people.
Somewhere between then and dissertation, almost half decide otherwise.
You think it's time to consider this?
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe." [And some things that I was the first to see, ever.] "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Register ment*rb**k.c*m (*o) Install appropriate Web CMS / Community system.
Ads won't rake in the cash, but I'd presume some specialised service like target classifieds for companies looking for experts or some Thesis Printing Service or something like that might cut it. Definitely worth a try.
Congratulations. You've just got yourself a brand new niche market web venue. :-)
Good luck. Drop us a line when your sipping Pina Coladas somewhere on the Bahamas after your sell-out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Did slashdot gets scientologists or other cranks to mark this as "itsnotscience" because he brings up psychology?
Either slashdot is growing a scientologist population, or people here don't know what constitutes a science.
Disclaimer: I am a current PhD grad in EE. Your field might be different, YMMV, etc.
Many people on this site will say research the latest papers or even insult you for asking a question regarding the best way to find a research mentor. Sorry about that, grad students can be ... curt at times. I'll try to answer your questions and provide some insight.
"Is this a common problem across all fields? Is there some ... this need?"
Sadly, this seems to be a problem in EE too (though I can't say much about other fields). The main reason for this problem is human laziness. Once a student goes through all the trouble to find a decent grad program to enroll to, there seems little reason to document this one-time affair. When I was in a similar situation as yours, I too thought of making a wiki type site where all my experience could be indexed and searchable by other students. However, I quickly became aware that this is pointless. First, PhD research tends to be VERY VERY specific so information useful for me has little value to others. Second, field specific information changes very rapidly so any program catalog would need constant updates or become useless in a matter of months. Third, people are lazy. Once you do through the process of choosing a program you have very little incentive to stream-line it. You will almost likely never encounter the problem again ... so why optimize.
But all is not lost, here are a few tips:
1. Don't listen to people telling you to read the all the latest research in your field. You will likely not understand it. That's not meant as an insult at all. While you might know the field you are interested (clinical psychology) you likely don't know any of the specific terms to do a thorough analysis. It would be like me telling a 3rd year EE undergrad interested in signals that they should read an IEEE transaction journal on motion compensated temporal filter DWT lifting algorithm, and somehow be able to understand it and contact the author regarding their research. It's unrealistic and probably does more harm than good (you might get depressed at how little you actually know).
If you are to read anything, read a light survey paper about clinical psychology to get acquianted with the terms. Then search for schools that do that. I.e. if pre-natal clinical psychology interests you (I have no idea if that's an actual field) then maybe UCLA does good work in it.
2. Talk. Perhaps your best source of information is a professor in your current school. Ask him/her what schools they would recommend for PhD work. You might be surprised at the answer, often they will recommend other schools and be able to tell you the good/bad. Also, be sure to ask what school they went to (it's usually on the department website anyways). Just make sure to ask more than a single professor's opinion, you don't want to be prejudiced by one guy's pet research project or arch-nemesis grant competitor (yeah, sadly some profs are like that).
3. Once you find a good school, check the department website and find a professor who does interesting work. Just call him and ask him about his research (professors ALWAYS like to talk about their research ... unlike some grads). Chances are you won't understand 90% of what the guy says, but you will get somewhat of a feel whether you can work with him for the next 2-3 years. Go ahead and call all profs in that research area ... you will learn just by talking over the phone who is reasonable and intelligent and who might be just a tad crazy.
Which brings me to the most important part ... make sure you find a mentor you can work with for at least 2-3 years. There is no point in trying to work with a genius if he's a jerk ... you won't get anywhere and your research (if any) will suffer. And if you don't find that one star research mentor, that's okay too (maybe he is still doing his postdoc). Just find a school where t
Not for stupid shit like research.
It seems like a text-searchable database could be built fairly quickly and maintained by users, saving countless aspiring grad students thousands of clicks through university websites.
Saving the time of graduate students is a non-priority in academia. On the contrary, standing jokes revolve around how other people can waste the time of graduate students in order to save some of their own time. How aggressive a form of this you will meet depends entirely on the culture in the subfield you will be doing research in and on your particular adviser. There are too many graduate students and people looking to be graduate students in comparison to how many permanent jobs there are in the field for people with a PhD (in most fields). So most graduate student's aren't going to stick around in the field after graduation and so it doesn't make sense for people to engage as readily with graduate student's as they do with graduates - though lots of people still do. At the same time every adviser is always looking for exceptionally talented and motivated students, and if you can make a concise and convincing case that you are both of those things, then that makes your life easier.
You would ideally want to have some idea what kind of a human being a given adviser is, though this can be hard with just email. You are going to be stuck with this person having some sort of power over you for three or more years. They will be writing your recommendations for years to come. You want the variety with a positive outlook and some kind of interest in and ability for creating a good environment for their students. You don't want the variety whose main concern is how to turn his or her students into papers that bear the adviser's name.
There is also a question of how independent you are and want to be. Some advisers will simply tell you to go read papers and do something great, which is exactly what you want if you want to be independent. You might be looking to have a lot more guidance than that, in which case there are other advisers who will want to be very involved - though this usually requires that what you do is very similar to what the adviser does. The social skills of people in academia also vary widely, and you can end up with some very blunt and abrasive people, just as you can end up with the kind of people who would just die if they thought they had offended you in any way.
The problem here is that there are lots of people looking to be graduate students, so most advisers are not going to be very interested in engaging in a discussion with you about whether or not they are abrasive people just looking to exploit their students. One way to get some idea about someone who looks promising is to ask that person's former students what they thought of their experience with him as their adviser. People ask advisers for evaluations of their former students all the time (just one more reason to choose well), it's only fair that their former students get asked to evaluate them as well. Don't expect anyone to bad-mouth their former adviser, but you can probably read between the lines if there is a big problem.
To maintain your motivation during your studies, and to perhaps present a better case to an advisor, it also pays off to think about what you might like to do after you graduate. Have a glimpse at offers for post docs right now to see if that sounds at all interesting to you - it's the next step if you are going to stay in academia. You might also look at jobs in industry that might be suited to what you want to do. It's not too important what you think seems good right now, what is important is the activities you have to engage in to be able to have an idea of what seems good, such as looking at job offers. Then it's something you will have in mind so you don't stand there with your thesis in hand three years from now, and then go "oh wait, now I need a job too. I wish I'd started looking for that two years ago." It may also help you to have a more informed opinion about whether studying for a PhD is really what you want to do.
When considering grad school, the most important thing is studying under a professor that is doing research you are interested in--that research will also be your research area. You should already have some topics you are interested in, maybe you have a general interest, if you're not sure, flip through some textbooks for topics that you find interesting and then search through the relevant databases (i.e., PsychInfo for Psychology) for research done on that topic. You'll likely find even more narrow focuses on things related to that topic while doing so, and you'll start to see a repeat of names of certain professors studying a specific topic. You can then look up the work by the professor and see if your interests match (hopefully, of course, they aren't foreigners). Make a list, get to know the topics you are interested in and the research they are doing before you apply.
This.
Another key concerns is that the advisorial relationship must necessarily be rather personal. You shouldn't assume you'll end up doing your PhD with the luminary in whatever specialization you initially approached. There are therefore several important criteria that matter when choosing a graduate program, which I'll list in rough order of importance :
(1) institution reputation, (2) faculty size, (3) faculty student ratio, (4) teaching workload, (5) faculty areas of interests, and (6) how much pay you.
Examples : You should not attend graduate schools like Perdue that require an insane teaching load, well you'd get stuck there for like 7+ years. You obviously should pick an institution with the significantly better name too, even if they don't carry your specialization. You should however be careful about institutions like Harvard with a tiny faculty and many students per professor, although choose them if your areas of interest match.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You certainly should not be dreaming of searchable dataases, trawling university web sites or posting to ask slashdot. That you are doing this does not bode well for your ability to complete a Ph.D.
It bodes perfectly well. Undertaking PhD studies is about learning how to do research, it's not about already knowing how to do everything the right way and then just doing that for three years. If you look at the responses that are coming in this thread, asking Slashdot was the best possible thing he could do and it'll have helped every other person looking to get into a PhD program who comes here from Google in future as well.
if you have to ask then you should stop aspiring.
Yeah, I'd say that at least in the American system (the European system is somewhat different), a typical PhD takes 5-6 years, and is segmented something like: 2-3 years of figuring out wtf is going on, and 3-4 years of doing a thesis.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"when your sipping" should be, "when you're sipping". I understand how a non-native speaker could make this mistake -- it's common among native speakers. I sometimes think that it's so common that corrections are futile, and I wonder how, with so many incorrect examples about, a non-native speaker could learn the language correctly at all. My compliments. (Not complements, by the way, which are something else entirely :-).)
And yes, your English is better than my German.
There are things called "journal articles", grasshopper.
You will need to use a search engine besides google, although I hear some such exist.
When you have journeyed long and know yourself well enough, you can place your true desires in the portal found, sort them so the dates lightest with history rise to the top, and you will see written the scribes of the Authors.
They too may call you grasshopper, but it is a start.
Are you sure you want to do a Phd?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Citation databases normally provide text and keyword-based searches which should allow you to narrow down to who the top published researcher are within your areas of interest. At that point, you can start to see where they're located and reach out to them directly.
Best of luck.
And if that's not what psychology is about, then what bloody use is it? Apparently what it doesn't produce are any research publications with authors' names on them - if it did, then the answer to your question would be blindingly obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense or the merest shred of native intelligence, wouldn't it?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
At Ph.D. prep level you should be reading research papers/journal articles to work out who's doing interesting work. You should also have networked in your undergrad and formed connections to people who can provide you with interesting opportunities in exchange for your hard work.
I'll second this. When I was figuring out where to apply for my Ph.D., I knew what I was interested in, and for a while I did browse the faculty lists of top schools just to see if there was anyone there interested in similar things. My interest is kind of an oddity in the field, and I didn't have much success finding anyone.
They way I ended up finding my school (i.e., faculty member) was when doing research for a paper. Course instructor recommended that I read so-and-so, because she is a professor in my field working on the topic. Later, course instructor introduced me to her at a conference. I read a few of her articles, bought some of her books, decided that would work for me.
Another thing I would stress is to make sure your faculty member is tenured and not planning on leaving for another school... or if they're not tenured, that you have more than one person you'd like to work with. It will suck if you go expecting to work with one person, only to find out a year later that they're no longer going to be teaching at the school.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
to research
Seriously... it's amazing what you can find on there. We met up, got on, had similar interests and the rest is history. So just keep on looking, and make sure you meet your mentor/supervisor and see if you click. If you don't, forget about doing a PhD with them - you need all the help you can get.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed mission accomplished
http://www.socialpsychology.org/clinrank.htm
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
As a current UK PhD student nearing the end of my three years, in my opinion you're looking for the wrong thing. Everyone will tell you that you need to be very passionate about your research and that it is the key to success. However, I don't feel that its true. The relationship between the student and supervisor is the most important aspect. If you don't have a good relationship, you will fail. So you should look for a supervisor that you can trust, who has the important qualities and skills (e.g. good communicator) and is willing to make time for you. You want a supervisor who is not happy with the way your current institution teaches its students, but instead is constantly evaluating him or herself to better the way they provide such an education. You don't want someone who will get lost in their own research, or is too busy as a Professor to see you often enough. I think the only way you will know who would work well with you is by comparing the lecturers who taught you for your undergraduate degree. Which ones were happy to provide assistance (e.g. timely, polite responses to your emails?) Which ones made the effort in lectures to aid your understanding by providing voice recordings of their lectures if you missed them, or mind-maps for each lecture, or turned up 15 minutes early if you had any problems? I chose this individual over a particular research topic. Obviously, the down side is that for three years I've been stuck researching artificial neural networks - which may or may not be my first choice. But I don't think I would be 3 months away from finishing if I was being supervised by any other member of staff in my department. Once you have the PhD, you are free to research what ever you like.
You could try http://www.academia.edu/
It's a social networking site for academics and lists research interests and so on
I think that's overly pessimistic. I think lots of generally capable students just don't get proper direction regarding how to navigate this phase of their academic careers. At the very worst, the OP maybe should pursue a master's degree as a way of getting more familiar with current research projects and their PIs, and to get more familiar with reading and critiquing research papers.
First, check out: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives"
"""
Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.
"""
Some very interesting psychologists; maybe look up some of their students?
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman#Positive_psychology
By a practicing psychiatrists on how vitamin D is related to much mental illness:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
By others on the psychological aspect of our society, personal troubles in it, and its infrastructure:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
"Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals" by Thomas Moore
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
"About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
On how improved nutrition will make people healthier and happier:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
And holistic aspects of health and diet too:
http://www.drweil.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.vivoweb.org/ "The national network of scientists will facilitate the discovery of researchers and collaborators across the country. Institutions will participate in the network by installing VIVO, or by providing semantic web-compliant data to the network."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It bodes perfectly well. Undertaking PhD studies is about learning how to do research, it's not about already knowing how to do everything the right way and then just doing that for three years. If you look at the responses that are coming in this thread, asking Slashdot was the best possible thing he could do and it'll have helped every other person looking to get into a PhD program who comes here from Google in future as well.
I have no idea what your education background is like but if you really think asking here is a good idea, I don't know what to say. I did a masters and while it was about learning how to do research you were expected to get off your backside and make contacts and read papers. And you weren't expected to take 3 years learning to do it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I am not trying to be offensive here. But Grad student are not the priority in the academia. Especially those who just finished their undergrad and don't have a Master (which is classical in psychology in America according to psychologist friend). Because Grad student don't know anything of value yet. So maintaining a list of interest for all researcher is pretty much useless.
I think that "finding" the "right" advisor is not possible. Because if you are not in a PhD program you do not know how things are classified in the field. You could read the web page of the perfect advisor and not even recognize it.
If I were you I would try to talk with local people in your field and ask for advice on where to apply.
I think some commenters here (those chiding you for not knowing the literature in the field before pursuing your PhD) are not familiar with what the clincal psychology PhD system is like. Perhaps they could google it. It's certainly structured differently from PhDs in other sciences; even other social sciences. As for the lack of existence of a database for what you want, I think (a) it exists, as others have noted, in the form of the published literature of the field (yeah, I know; not what you were looking for), and (b) something like what you're suggesting--which would be wonderful--may suffer from hurdles of money and the academic culture. Who will pay to create and maintain this database? Subscriptions? Maybe. And we academics tend to be somewhat independent. In a thousand subtle ways, staying in your own office/lab and doing your own work with minimal outside interference/help is reinforced, even as we are bombarded with purely verbal injunctions to collaborate, mentor, get outside our departments, etc. So I would support your idea wholeheartedly--it would have helped me immensely, a few years back--but I don't know how to make it work.
Why?
Are you independently wealthy and feel that having a bonfire is an insufficiently showy way to destroy a quarter million dollars? Or do you think that your name would sound a lot better with 'Dr' in front of it?
Because I can't think of any other reason to go for a PhD. Unless you think that once you graduate you're going to be one of the three people on the entire continent who somehow manages to get a University job teaching the next generation of misguided students who think that a PhD is a good idea too. And that's just crazy, seeing as most universities can barely afford to keep the faculty they already have and think that "tenure" is a dirty word.
Entering a PhD program may be an effective way to fill the next ten years of your life, but it's not going to help you work in your field. Unless your idea of "working in your field" is traveling to three different schools a week to teach undergraduates while taking home less than minimum wage, in which case you still don't need anything more than a Masters degree.
Why not save yourself some time and aggravation? Borrow a couple hundred thousand dollars from the bank, use it to buy a small sledge hammer and about twenty bottles of Night Train, head down to the waterfront and burn all of the remaining money in a barrel. While you're doing that share all of the wine with whoever else happens to be there and after about two hours of hard drinking and vomiting, try to convince them all to provide feedback on your research. Or ask them what colour the moon is. If you can wake one of the slobbering drunks long enough to tell you "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", then you win. Oh, and the sledge hammer? Smash yourself in the forehead with it every two minutes, and twice if you start to feel like you're making progress.
Congratulations, you've just had the full experience of a PhD program in only one weekend, saving you countless years of otherwise wasted time. For the extended experience make sure to put your drunken binge on your resume whenever you apply for a job, guaranteeing that you will be passed over in favour of someone younger and saner, and try to pay off the huge loan you took out for the rest of your life.
Do yourself a favor and go to medical school. Clinical psychology is a joke. It is meant for people who can't get into medical school but still want to be part of the 'clinical world.' You will never be accepted as a PhD in an MD clinic.
As an academic researcher, my interests vary depending on the latest developments in the field. It would be not wise for me to publicize these interests in a centralized list or even on my own webpage, as my competition would be more than happy to get some extra insight into what I'm trying and scoop me.
Thus, this problem is worse than you think. You can't even trust a professor's university webpage to give you an honest account of what they're currently working on. Perhaps clinical psychology is different, there's no competition and everyone is happy to give public monthly updates. I doubt it.
So, what to do? Some people here say read papers. If you can follow them, that's fine. Better to simply call or e-mail clinical psychologists and explain what kind of research you're looking for. You need to find *departments* which specialize in the research you want, not *individuals*. You will not finish if you tie your hopes onto one professor only to find out he's an asshole or incompetent.
Such a resource exists. It is being developed and you might find some of the participants do have searchable sites by discipline. It is VIVO: Enabling National Networking of Scientists. http://www.vivoweb.org
"Is this a common problem across all fields?"
Yes!
Still, be picky. Don't choose the one closest to your home town, chose the best.
Use the gratis "Publish or Perish" program by http://www.harzing.com/ to analyze the particular field you are interested in.
Don't go for the 2nd best!!!
My wife has her PhD in clinical psychology.
At the PhD level, what you want to do is research the journals. Your university will have access to them. You want to see what your potential mentor has published recently to see if their interests align with yours, then dig deeper on a small set of people (target less than 20 based on recent publications, then research those individuals in detail). Narrow it down to the best 10. Send them email asking them a (small) set of questions. The right mentor will take the time to answer a quick email, even from a random potential student. Narrow it down to 5, and apply to all of their programs. Tell them why you are doing so, it will increase your odds of getting in.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Or maybe its just me.
Either way, if you can't find a mentor on your own, perhaps you shouldn't bother trying to complete a PhD program? Its not a game of Where's Waldo you know? Generally people tend to get a little further into it before trying to find some one else to do their work for them, you haven't even started yet.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You want your advisor to be the guy/gal who's been doing it for 30 years, and isn't into playing silly games about "I'm smarter than you" or "I had to jump through a hoop 3 meters high, so you need to jump 4", etc. The more senior advisor already has the zillion papers, has made their rep, and doesn't need to worry about it any more, and can actually focus on *you* in a paternalistic avuncular sort of "passing the torch" thing.
You don't want to be *competing* in the same field as your advisor, for journal cites, for grant money, for etc. You want someone who knows how the *system* works, who knows people for you to talk to, and how to put together the committee and put the screws to them to sign the darn thesis already.
I have no idea what your education background is like but if you really think asking here is a good idea, I don't know what to say.
My background is that I have a PhD. Are you saying that if you read the comments in this discussion and take it all with a grain of salt, then that won't be helpful information if you are looking to get a PhD?
Undertaking PhD studies is about learning how to do research, it's not about already knowing how to do everything the right way and then just doing that for three years.
This is to be read as "it's not about already knowing what to do and then doing that for three years." It's not intended to be a statement about how you should be not knowing what to do for 3 years - even if it can take quite a while to figure it all out.
If you can't get over this hurdle, then your chances of doing original and rigorous work in your chosen field don't look that good.
Oh come on, he's an aspiring social "scientist", his chances of doing rigorous work don't look all that good to begin with.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I agree with the comments above that conducting a literature review is a good place to start. However, one way that occurs to me is that most universities maintain lists of professors for the press to contact for comments about stories in their areas of research. These lists (at least at my institution) are listed under "Press Contacts" and are listed by the particular research interest.
. . . was to check the graduate programs listing on the American Chemical Society website, which was broken down by division (inorganic, biochem, etc.) and listed by university. I then started checking those particular university websites for the faculty members listed by my interest, and stopped when I'd reached ten universities (about 16 faculty members). Yeah, it took me several hours before I had a list of faculty I wanted to work with, but it's not like this is a decision you want to make in 15 minutes anyway.
And if the APA doesn't have that kind of resource available, write to them - they are a professional development organization, and this is EXACTLY the kind of thing for which they exist.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Research is an ever-moving target. So are faculty lists. Couple this reality with the limited attention most Universities give to their websites and the problems you are facing are evident.
That being said, you can get a good idea of what kinds of research you want to do as a grad student, where it is done, and by whom through online research.
But, first, speak to professors at your current school in order to get some ideas and recommendations. If you're serious about going to grad school then you'll probably need them for recommendations anyhow.
A good place to look are for annotated bibliographies. Try university library websites. Some have good annotated bibliographies or reading lists.
Another good source is SSRN -- or Social Science Research Network. www.ssrn.com
You may also want to check out BePress. http://www.bepress.com/
Finally, you really might need to just dig through University websites and look through each faculty member's page. Arduous, but likely necessary.
Good luck with it.
I think lots of generally capable students just don't get proper direction regarding how to navigate this phase of their academic careers.
Mod parent up.
There's a lot of pre-Ph.D. advice that seems to be like, "well, if you aren't already familiar with the current research and researchers in the field and know exactly what project you want to work on and all of the relevant journals and top papers, etc., etc., then you shouldn't even dream of applying to a Ph.D. program." Already knowing that stuff is probably a recipe for an excellent start, but it's not necessary (and it's not sufficient).
Figuring out how to get started in academia can be tricky. It helps to have the advice of knowledgeable professors. You'll probably also want to go bumbling around the internet looking for advice - although lots of the advice is of the pessimistic and discouraging nature I mention above. But, it will at least give you some ideas of how to make a good start.
There are beginnings of such a system to see who is doing what. The University of Illinois and The University of Wisconsin have been collaborating on something called BibApp. More info is at http://bibapp.org/
However, it is on the initiative of individual campuses to install, implement, and promote the software. That takes organization most campuses don't have.
My background is that I have a PhD. Are you saying that if you read the comments in this discussion and take it all with a grain of salt, then that won't be helpful information if you are looking to get a PhD?
I'm saying someone not interested enough to read research papers and who after at least a 3 year undergrad still has no idea how to find something interesting to work on has little hope of completing a PhD. But what do I know? I only have a Masters, so you outrank me.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The OP reminds me of myself when I was coming of age on the internet. The year was circa 1995 and I was 13 years old when I was shocked - SHOCKED - to find out there was no "BeautifulBlondesWithBreasts.com." In the whole world wide, no one had thought to make that site.
Or, when I was a recent C/S undergrad and I looked on Monster.com for 20 minutes, after which I gave up and lamented about how there were no good entry level jobs for budding C++ developers.
have you tried http://www.academia.edu/ ?
The academic "meat market" you seek is called the "conference circuit!" That's where Profs and neophyte academics get to size each other up, get it on in some way they both enjoy, and maybe later get formally hitched.
If you don't know the field well enough to identify a good mentor in your area of interest, reading Uni web sites won't help.
Try science citation indices for your subject of interest; look for a prof at a teaching school who is well-cited and has frequent student co-authors. Avoid the guy at the giant research lab who only shares credit with other senior scientists or not at all. Student authors can usually be identified because they have few papers or no Ph.D.
Finally, if you can't identify a field of interest and good papers in that field, you're not ready to be so picky. Get a Masters degree at a good school, attend a conference or two and call back in a few years.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
I suggest doing a literature search on your topic of interest, and then running a frequency analysis on the authors. That way you can identify the most prolific researchers in your area to track down.
do you think getting your PhD is the right choice?
A: you shouldn't, b/c it's not.
Log into illumina or any other paper search system. Plug in the terms you're interested in, see what papers come up that are widely used as references, and then who the authors and affiliations on those papers are.
This seems ideal, to me, because it lets you actually read the papers of the people who might be of interest, and it gives you a built in way to check their credibility.
At my university we have a number of faculty who *say* they're pursuing research in certain areas, but when you look at their publications and work, it's clear that only a couple of them are *actually* pursuing that research and are thus worth working with.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.