Questions to Ask About PhD Programs
Questions for applicants and admitted students weighing PhD offers. They cover the funding package in detail, how advisors are assigned and what happens when that relationship fails, time to completion, attrition, and where graduates actually end up.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What exactly is in the funding package: the amount, how many years are guaranteed, and what work is required in exchange?
Why ask it
Guaranteed and typical are different words, and a five-year offer contingent on annual renewal is not a five-year offer. Ask for the letter to state the number of years, the summer months, and the teaching or research hours attached.
What does the stipend leave after rent in this city?
Why ask it
Do the subtraction with a real local rent figure rather than a cost-of-living index, because a larger stipend in an expensive city is often the worse offer. Current students will tell you whether people take second jobs, which is the practical answer.
What happens to students who are still working in the year after funding ends?
Why ask it
Overrunning is normal in many fields, and departments differ enormously in whether they find teaching, let students go unpaid, or quietly push them out. Ask how many current students are past their funded years and what they are living on.
What is the median time to completion here, and what share of students leave without the degree?
Why ask it
Both numbers exist, and reluctance to share them is itself informative. A high attrition rate is not automatically damning, but you want to know whether people leave in year two after a fair look or in year six with nothing to show.
What are the milestones, and when does each one fall?
Why ask it
Coursework, language or method requirements, qualifying exams, and a prospectus defence should map onto specific terms. A programme that cannot lay out the sequence is one where students discover requirements late, which is how timelines slip.
How much teaching is required, in which years, and as instructor or as assistant?
Why ask it
Teaching is useful and it competes directly with the dissertation, so the year it lands matters. Running your own course sections while writing a prospectus is a very different load from marking for someone else.
If I worked with this person, how many students do they have now, and how many have they graduated?
Why ask it
Twelve current students and two completions is a warning, and so is a supervisor who has never taken a student through to the end. Ask the graduated students what supervision was actually like, since they can speak freely.
Where is my prospective advisor in their career: up for tenure, on leave, moving, or near retirement?
Why ask it
Each of those changes the attention you will get and the risk you are taking, and none of them will appear on a webpage. A pre-tenure supervisor may be highly engaged and may also leave, and a retiring one may not be there for your defence.
How are advisors chosen or assigned, and how easy is it to change?
Why ask it
Some departments admit students to a specific lab, others let them shop for two years, and the difference determines how trapped you can become. Ask how many students switched supervisors recently, and whether they kept their funding when they did.
What is the formal process if a student has a serious problem with a supervisor?
Why ask it
You want a named person outside the supervisory relationship, such as a graduate director or ombuds office, and evidence that the route has been used. A department where the answer is that this never happens has not thought about the power imbalance involved.
What happens to a student's project and funding if their advisor moves to another institution?
Why ask it
This occurs regularly and the outcomes vary from following the advisor, to remote supervision, to being reassigned mid-project. Ask what happened the last time it happened here, since the policy and the practice are often different.
What is expected in terms of publishing before graduation, and how is authorship decided?
Why ask it
In lab sciences the authorship conventions in the group matter more than the departmental policy, and they are best asked about directly. Vagueness here is where students end up third author on their own work.
What money is available for conferences, fieldwork, archives, or equipment, and who decides?
Why ask it
A stipend that cannot cover a flight to the field or a conference limits the career the degree is meant to build. Ask what a typical student received last year rather than what the maximum is.
What are the health insurance, sick leave, and parental leave arrangements for funded students?
Why ask it
A five-to-seven year commitment covers the years when people get ill, have children, and lose parents, so this is not a distant concern. Ask whether leave pauses the funding clock or simply consumes it.
Are graduate workers unionised here, and what does the contract cover?
Why ask it
Where there is a contract, it usually sets minimum stipends, workload caps, and a grievance route, which makes many of the softer answers verifiable. Where there is not, ask what happens when a supervisor asks for weekend work.
What are the last five graduates of this programme doing now?
Why ask it
You want positions and institutions, not a general statement about strong placement. If the same two success stories from a decade ago come up again, that is the answer.
Of the students who wanted academic jobs, how many got them, and over how many years on the market?
Why ask it
Placement rates are often quoted on those who sought positions, or across many years, which flatters the figure. The number of postdocs or adjunct years before a permanent post is the part that describes your likely twenties and thirties.
How does the department treat students who take jobs outside academia?
Why ask it
Most graduates in most fields will work outside universities, and some departments regard that as failure while others actively prepare people for it. Ask whether recent non-academic graduates are invited back to speak, which is an easy test.
How large is a cohort, and do students collaborate or compete?
Why ask it
Cohort size shapes whether you have peers doing what you do, and internal competition for funding or supervisor attention shapes everything else. Ask students whether they read each other's drafts, since the answer is a good measure of the atmosphere.
Who should not come here, and when would you advise an applicant to go elsewhere?
Why ask it
A confident department can describe its limits: a method it does not teach, a subfield with no supervisor, a city that suits some lives and not others. The claim that it suits everyone means you are being recruited rather than advised.
Evaluating a doctoral offer
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Talk to Students Without Faculty Present
Ask for names beyond the ones you were given
Visit-day hosts are chosen. Email two or three students you found on the department website, ideally in years four and five, and ask for twenty minutes with no faculty on the thread.
Ask senior students, not first years
A first-year student is still in the honeymoon and has not met the exams, the funding cliff, or the job market. Students in their fifth year know what the programme actually does to a person.
Ask about people who left
Every cohort loses someone, and the reasons given inside the department are the most candid information available. If nobody will discuss it, treat the completion figures you were quoted with caution.
Ask one blunt question
Would you accept this offer again, knowing what you know now. Hesitation carries as much information as the answer.
Numbers to Get in Writing
- The stipend figure, the number of guaranteed years, and any renewal conditions.
- Tuition and fee waivers, and which fees you still pay yourself.
- Summer funding, and whether it depends on teaching or a grant.
- Required teaching hours by year.
- Health insurance coverage and what it costs you per month.
- Conference and research travel allowances.
- Median time to degree and the completion rate for the last decade.
- What leave is available and whether it pauses the funding clock.
Warning Signs
- Funding described as typical, usually available, or not a problem, rather than guaranteed in the letter.
- A supervisor with many current students and few completions.
- No answer on attrition, or surprise that you asked.
- Placement described only through one or two graduates from years ago.
- Current students unwilling to speak without a faculty member on the call.
- Overrunning students living on adjunct work with no departmental support.
- A grievance process that exists on paper and has apparently never been used.
- Pressure to accept before you have spoken to a single current student.