<p>I just got into my (more or less) top choice PhD program. The department is small, really small compared to the others I'm looking at, but I know (and like) most of the people there already, and I love the research. It's the only program I've applied to where I can completely say, I want to work for X doing X.</p>
<p>The biggest reservation I have involves the possibility of my advisor not being there for however long it takes to get my PhD. He's in his mid-sixties, and while you would think he's still going strong from meeting him, but that's not really true. He's had a stroke (the kind that you don't know you've had until much later), and his family has since made him cut back his travels. He's never mentioned retirement to me, so I get the feeling he might work until he can't. He's tremendously enthusiastic. Five years minimum is a tremendously long time.</p>
<p>I would like to also add to this question an assistant professor coming up for tenure in a couple years, half way through your graduate career, especially at places, such as Harvard, where it is difficult to get tenure.</p>
<p>Ditto. If you want to work with an assistant professor at Harvard, Yale or other places that eat up assistant professors make sure you arrive no more than two years after that person begins their appointment.</p>
<p>I never did get too much feedback on this, which was a disappointment to me given the amount of questions I’ve answered on college confidential. Anyway, I wanted give an update because someone may be in the same situation I was in and could use similar advice. </p>
<p>I did choose the program I talked about above and earlier this month, my advisor passed away. My advisor had become seriously ill shortly after I had made my final decision and had a variety of complications that had sometimes kept him out of the office, but never out of enthusiasm. He’d been deteriorating, but his death was a surprise. He did indeed work until the end, and phoned into our group meeting the day he died.</p>
<p>If I made a different decision, I would have thought I made the right one when getting this news, but I don’t know that I’ve actually made the wrong decision. Part of me is glad I got to work for and know my advisor.</p>
<p>Practically speaking, my exams are behind me and folks at my school have told me that they want me to get out on time with my degree. It’s likely that even our lab will remain around and operating long enough for me to finish. I get the impression that no one’s getting suddenly thrown out, and the department admins care about the fate of the staff researchers in my lab and me, though it’s too soon to tell if this was just something that was said or will actually pan out over the long haul.</p>
<p>A side-effect of my advisor’s illness is that it allowed me to get away with being be less directed about the contents of my thesis than I should have otherwise been. It won’t be until much later that I’ll be able to evaluate whether I made good decisions or bad decisions before, during and after.</p>
<p>I am glad I’m close to home-- I’ve been able to have the support of my parents and sisters at hand.</p>
<p>I am terribly sorry - he must have been a great guy. Your loss is double: a personal loss and professional. I suppose there’s always an added risk picking an older advisor or one with known health problems, but I think the way science PhD programs are set up with having a human person be so important to your training/career is inherently risky. I don’t even know you - but I hope you are ok. Best of luck.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry. This has to be difficult from a personal perspective as well as a professional one. </p>
<p>Your advisor obviously expected to work for several more years. Once a professor starts to think of retirement, s/he stops taking students; this usually happens up to four year prior to retirement. He expected to be there for you and his other students. </p>
<p>The truth is that any advisor could be with you one day and not the next, no matter how young or old. When something like this happens to a program, the professors often gather round to protect the remaining students as much as they can. It says a lot about your program that others have stepped in to advise you. I hope that you are able to develop a close working relationship with another professor to get you through your dissertation and beyond, to employment.</p>
<p>Mine died in the middle of my dissertation, and I never did finish. (No regrets now.) And it would have been VERY difficult to get another good working relationship when there was no one else in the department would have been competent to handle it.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear your story, even more amazed by your original post dated back in 2008. I guess I was busy back then writing up my dissertation. Although I do not have a personal experience accountable to yours, I could share you some of the quick patch kit to buffer this transition period. Thanks to one of my close friends who had had such a miserable transition. </p>
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<li><p>Look out for professors who are working in your similar areas. Professors studying on diabetes might be sympathetic to your situation and will be considerate if your study was more or less on diabetes. Needless to say if your previous study (3 years had gone) was on Alzheimer’s disease, sympathy cannot compensate for expertise you need. </p></li>
<li><p>If your data are too strong, and the worst comes to worst, you cannot find an available supervisor in your program, you can consider a professor from slightly close field who will become your main supervisor in your current institution though he/she might not have much knowledge on your study (the worst case scenario) and look out for professors in your sub-field or area from other universitites, approach them and explain your situation. They could become at least your collaborators, not your main supervisor, which will help in troubleshooting or providing expertise in case you accidentally veer off the track you’ve been exploring for 3 years or less. My friend chose this approach initially but inter-institutional policy and not having immediate help is not fun when you’re analyzing data and writing up your thesis. So he chose the last option. </p></li>
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<p>The last option is, considering you not interested in academia or having second thought, terminating or downgrading to Masters. That’s totally upto you and you need to discuss with peers and seniors who could give you some thought about your current program. </p>
<p>Hope you can successfully sail though this disaster.</p>