Here are a few quick thoughts about applying for your PhD! I will elaborate on this post more in the future!
There are three general ways that one can go about finding a PhD position: 1) Responding to an advertisement Many PIs with grants or other funding to address specific questions will advertise for PhD students on ECOLOG or some of the other list-servs mentioned in this previous post. This can be a great opportunity for a new PhD student because you are 1) guaranteed funding and 2) given a question to pursue. However, if you have specific research interests, it may be more difficult to find a posting that matches exactly with what you're keen to study. For many of these positions, you'll be asked to provide a cover letter in addition to your CV. Remember to keep your cover letter short and sweet - no more than one page! Many profs don't have the time to read the novel you've written about all your great accomplishments. Focus on the highlights, and if you're a good match, interested profs will follow up to hear more. 2) Cold call professors I found my PhD advisor after reading an article about their work in a Smithsonian Magazine. Pop sci media and scientific articles are a great place to start searching for people whose interests align with your own! If you're able, dig around in the literature (Google Scholar all the way!) to see who is currently publishing in your field, and follow up on the kinds of research they're doing. I would highly recommend looking for up-and-coming professors who are actively publishing lots of material and seem to have a good handle on the current state of ecology and statistics - and definitely check in with their current lab to see how people view them and their research (see below). One big issue with approaching the graduate school search this way is that profs might not have their own funding to take on new students. Often, universities or departments will offer TAs (teaching assistantships) or fellowships to incoming graduate students - if you apply, you may be guaranteed funding for at least the first couple of years! If you're very lucky, your prof of interest may have enough of their own money to put you on a RA (research assistantship), where you can focus more intently on your graduate studies. It's always worth reaching out and asking. As with reading cover letters, many professors don't have the time to read a long email about you and your academic dreams. I would recommend an introductory email of ~2 paragraphs to see if you can incite a longer conversation about your research and goals. 3) Apply for your own fellowships If you can approach a lab with your own funding, very few PIs will turn you down! In the USA, the big source of PhD funding is the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP), which funds three years of graduate research. Here is a great list of postdoctoral fellowships - I will update this post with more PhD fellowships soon, but Google is your friend for finding these opportunities! For these fellowships, reach out to the PI you are interested in working with first. If they don't have the personal funding to take you on but are interested in your ideas, ask if they would be interested in working with you to apply for one of these opportunities. This is supremely helpful for several reasons: 1) you don't waste time writing for a position where the PI couldn't take you even if they had the money; 2) the PI can help you write and edit your proposal, directing you towards the most pressing and interesting questions in your field; and 3) you get a chance to work with your PI before committing to graduate school - you may discover that they don't have the mentoring style that you're looking for! I wrote for the NSF GRFP twice - getting rejected the first time was hard, but excellent experience for writing a second, far better proposal. If you look online, you'll find many examples of successful fellowships - model your writing and structure off of these! Many past recipients are often happy to share their documents if you reach out and ask nicely. These fellowships are often very competitive, so it's worth taking every advantage you can find! Other thoughts PhD programs in the USA last about the same time as the average marriage (~8 years). Joining a lab and working for a specific PI is a long-term commitment: graduate school is hard enough without being in a situation where do you don't have the support you need to keep going. Communicating with current and past graduate students is a critical way to get insider info on what it's like to work in a specific lab. Ask for candid information on the professor's mentoring style, implicit biases, expectations, and the atmosphere they cultivate in their labs. Be conscious of your own need going in and see how they fit with PI's expectations. If you need constant support and feedback, a 'hands-off' professor might not be the right fit for you. Do you thrive better under competition or collaboration, and what does your PI of interest foster among their graduate students? It's also worth asking about their history of being funded (if you're relying on them for financial support) and the relationship they have with collaborators you're interested in working with. I found this infographic on Twitter that outlines a number of great questions to follow up on when identifying a graduate advisor:
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