The most important thing to
do during your visit is to interact with the graduate students from
the department you are visiting. Talk to as many as you can, in fact
you should print a list of their names and take a note of how many did
you interact with (for example, how many actually came to the
colloquium, lunch, party etc.) If the department has 40 graduate
students, but you have only seen 3 "designated happy ones" during your
visit, there is a problem.
Make sure you have sufficient time for "unsupervised" interaction with
graduate students, and if none has been scheduled, ask for it. Ask
the graduate students questions about financial support, hours they
spend working as TAs, cost of living, health insurance, fun things to
do in spare time, working atmosphere, interaction, where and how they
live, classes and pretty much anything else. They recently went
through exactly the same process as you are going through right now,
and still remember it well, so they are a great resource, but at the
same time they are not as vested as the faculty in getting you to
come, so they should be more open with you.
Talk to as many faculty as
you can about their research and future research opportunities if you
were to come (remember, faculty are the only people who are paid to
work with you). Ask how many graduate students they are already
advising. In a sense you are interviewing them, as they already made
their decision (but don't be a jerk, no point in making enemies so
early in your career, it will happen sooner or later anyway). Find
out in detail about how graduate projects are assigned or chosen, and
what happens if a project doesn't work out. The truth is that a lot of
exciting science is going on in most of the astronomy departments, so
in principle you will have access to cutting-edge research pretty much
no matter where you go. It therefore becomes important to understand
how that happens in practice in each department ("scientific
freedom"). Good breadth of possible research topics is a plus, but
don't fall victim to the "chinese
buffet syndrome" (I just made this one up): since you couldn't
decide what you were hungry for, you went for a large number of
pseudo-choices, while in fact many of the items you would have never
even tried, some you are allergic to, it turned out they ran out of
the stuff you like best, your stomach can only fit that much food
anyway, and halfway through the meal you realized what you really
wanted was a good steak
:) The fact that there are other astronomical institutions physically
located close to the place you are considering is of very little
actual value for you as a graduate student: if you are not a student
from their institution, they will not work with you, as any faculty
member worth working with is already saturated with students from
their own institution. I would go as far as to say that any astronomy
department that strongly stresses that you can be advised by people from
outside the department and making that sound as a great plus is
actually saying that they don't have enough faculty to advise all
their graduate students: don't fall for that.
Get good information about
departmental access to telescopes etc.,
but remember, data are easier and easier to get access to these days,
with all the satellites public data, archives such as SDSS etc., and this is becoming more and
more the case, leveling the playing field significantly. It is still
good to have access to one or two of the
largest telescopes in the world, but note that some of the most
interesting astronomy in recent years have been done with ~10cm
diameter photo lenses (e.g., transit planet searches). If you have any
interest in building
astronomical instrumentation, ask if such opportunities exist,
people who know how to build stuff are in high demand on the
astronomy job market.
In a broader sense, your
visit serves to get a sense of the "environment" of the department.
Will you talk to just your adviser, and then only once a week? Will
you be able to talk to and learn from other faculty members, both in
formal and informal settings? Will you feel like you work in a
"morgue"? Did you see people smiling during your visit? Laughing?
Does it seem like a fun and exciting place to work? Do you think you
will still want to be an astronomer after 5-6 years at this place?
Try to ignore the weather
during your visit, be it bad or good. If it is 70F and sunny during
your early March visit, it will likely be
scorching hot during the summer. If it is cold and miserable
during your visit, that might mean a great weather for the rest of the
year. Weather and environment do matter some, but if you already
somehow know that you would be absolutely miserable somewhere because
of the weather there, don't even apply. Conversely, if you know you
would be spending all your time there surfing or climbing rocks, it
might also not be the best place for your graduate career: you are
going to graduate school to become a professional astronomer.
November 2008
