Every day, millions of prospective graduate students reach out to prospective graduate supervisors. If that’s you, or it will be soon, you’re probably wondering:
“Should I pitch my own unique idea? Or just indicate a general interest in a professor’s area? What’s the best strategy to win over prospective supervisors, and land a great Master’s / PhD position?”
The unfortunate truth is that neither of those choices is quite right. In the space of interdisciplinary research related to people and nature, the likely winning strategy requires both independent creativity and adaptability to fit your supervisor’s interests and expertise.
Although neither “pitch your own” and “interest in professor’s area” is sufficient, both could be a good starting point. But the process that needs to ensue requires more careful thought than the vast majority of prospective students put in.
In many cases, this seems to be because students just don’t know how to approach this complex problem. That’s where this post comes in, to help.
In some cases, prospective students aren’t yet capable of doing the careful thought that I call for below. In my opinion, if the careful thought below feels too hard or onerous and boring, this might indicate that now is not the right time for you to apply to a research-based graduate program.
Why “pitch your own” often won’t work alone
The motivation for “pitch your own” is obvious. You want a research project that will be fulfilling, and you need to demonstrate originality. What better way to achieve both goals than to propose your own independent project?
It’s thinking of “independent” as not in close conversation with your prospective supervisors’ work that problems arise. If you go it alone here, and you don’t attend to what you can learn from the research that prospective supervisors have conducted, it’s likely that your prospective supervisor won’t be able to fund your work. Even if they could, they’re unlikely to take you on because professors need to grow our knowledge and research portfolio strategically and robustly. Venturing out into new, disconnected territory is a recipe for us to spread ourselves thin and to fail to serve our students well.
If your research isn’t in close conversation with your supervisors’ work, you can’t benefit much from their supervision. And that draws away from our motivation as supervisors, because we seek mentorship relationships where we contribute meaningfully.
Moreover, without putting your research in conversation with a nuanced set of other research, it’s likely to seem “basic”. Every question worth investigating has been considered carefully by many researchers before you. Only by engaging directly with those other efforts can you identify where you can add meaningful value.
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| Writing a proposal is like drawing or painting a landscape picture of a mountain. It takes nuance to do it well, and it needs the landscape. Credits: Mountain icon created by azmianshori - Flaticon; Peaks icon created by PLANBSTUDIO - Flaticon; Landscape icon created by Freepik - Flaticon |
Why “interest in professor’s area” won’t work alone
Given the difficulty of pitching a novel piece of research before even starting a grad program, it’s understandable that many students resort to a chameleon strategy of appearing to be adaptable to work on any project their supervisor might suggest. But I’m wary of this strategy, for several reasons.
Students are not, in fact, equally motivated by all kinds of problems. If they are, it’s because they’re not really motivated by any of them. And intrinsic motivation, that sense of purpose and curiosity, is essential to a successful graduate program.
Moreover, most supervisors are looking for students who can and will advance projects substantially without micromanaging. This isn’t laziness; it’s because great things only happen when there are multiple brains, each with their own rich history and insights, come together.
And, so, even if this strategy seems to be paying off in attracting a prospective supervisor, the student should be wary. Because supervisors who are not steered by the student’s own curiosity and creativity might not be the kind of professor you want in charge of your life for the next few years.
The solution: Fleshing out nuance via supervisors’ research
The only real way forward is to braid together your interests with those of prospective supervisors (Figure 1?). You can start anywhere, the point is to keep reading and braiding.
You can begin with your own idea, and identify prospective supervisors based on that. Then read some of their papers, and refine your idea based on those. If it’s too much of a reach, rethink the prospective supervisors until you find a good fit. Refine your ideas based on their research, then reach out, get more input, and refine some more.
You can also begin by identifying prospective supervisors, reading their research. If you’re bored by a paper, pass it over. If you’re bored by all of a professors’ papers, move on to the next candidate. Once you get to papers that interest you, pay special attention to the latter parts of recent Discussion sections. That’s where you’ll find clues about what your supervisor is excited to work on. If one or more of those ideas excites you, too, dig a bit deeper, and start to form some of your own ideas about what you could do in that space.
It's crucial that the larger landscape you depict in your proposal integrates ideas beyond your prospective supervisor's research. Don't just cite their work! Their research exists in a broader context, and by depicting that, you'll demonstrate your capacity to contribute new insights.
Either way, what you’re aiming for is like the third image above, on the right. If writing a proposal is like drawing a mountain, what you really need to do is to draw a mountain in its landscape (of the literature), where your mountain is squarely in the range of your supervisor’s previous climbs.
That’s how you can explore your own uncharted territory, and have fun and good company doing it. Bon voyage!
CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.
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