precedent of graduate student success in choosing a PhD advisor
If you are a graduate student in the process of finding a thesis advisor, one factor that you should consider is how well previous graduate students have done. Some objective measures to look at are:
1) How many publications did each graduate student finishing in the last 5 years have?
2) Does the lab produce high quality or high impact articles? And if so, are graduate students the first authors or is it mostly post-docs?
3) How many years did graduate students finishing over the last 5 years take to complete the PhD?
You may find that some graduate students in the lab get tons of publications and others get none. If this is the case, consider probing a little deeper to find out why. Even if it as simple as a matter of some students just not working hard, then you should also wonder why that is the case.
