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20 Graduate School Questions To Ask Your Potential Grad School Advisors

Written by Grad School Center Team We are a passionate team of experienced educators and advisors at GradSchoolCenter.com, dedicated to guiding students through their graduate education journey. Our experts, with advanced degrees across various disciplines, offer personalized advice, up-to-date program information, and practical insights into application processes.

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Updated: November 27, 2023, Reading time: 16 minutes

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Getting admitted into a grad program is only the beginning of your grad school journey.

One of the primary considerations you need to keep in mind is to choose the right advisor. Many graduate students tend to overlook the importance of this choice and focus more on graduate school interviews. However, it, too, is a decision that can make or break your graduate education.

When choosing your graduate school advisor, you have to make sure that you are asking the right questions to gauge whether your prospects are the right fit for your exceptional academic experience and can help you achieve your professional goals.

To ensure the smooth sailing process of selecting a research advisor, you must prepare for graduate school questions beforehand. These questions must be able to help you establish your possible relationship with your advisor, who will be playing a significant role throughout your graduate school journey.


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Grad School Center is an advertising-supported site. Featured or trusted partner programs and all school search, finder, or match results are for schools that compensate us. This compensation does not influence our school rankings, resource guides, or other editorially-independent information published on this site.

Why is it Crucial to Choose the Right Advisor?

Your graduate school experience is largely shaped and influenced by your graduate school advisor. A qualified and esteemed advisor will be able to guide you throughout graduate education, from helping you complete your research project to ensuring that your research interests align with your career goals.

Many graduate programs require a thesis or a thesis project, but not all do! However, a graduate advisor can help you with other aspects of your grad school journey.

They are often responsible for giving you exceptional mentoring when you need it and pushing you to work towards your academic goals. They will help you identify and magnify your strengths and develop your weaknesses.

The process of choosing a graduate advisor can be daunting for graduate students, but it can get easier if you know what you are looking for in an advisor. You can keep the following things in mind when you are looking for an advisor:

Ensure you have mutual research interests.

This is important if you want to gain a better understanding of your research questions and the contribution you are trying to make in the field and successfully complete your research.

You may start by doing basic research on the research interests of the faculty members in your graduate program’s department. It will be helpful to select an advisor who has an active scholarly agenda in the area of your research.

Look into the faculty’s completion track record.

Some advisors may be scholars and outstanding faculty members, but they may not have an excellent track record when it comes to helping their advisees graduate. You may want to find out about the success rate and average time of completion for graduate students who are doing their dissertations.

Make sure you are compatible with your advisor.

It is essential to see yourself being able to spend the next few years working with your potential advisor. This means you must at least find an advisor whose personality is compatible with yours to some degree. After all, you will be working closely with this individual.

What You Need to Do Before the Grad School Interviews

A campus visit is often given as an opportunity for graduate students to get to know the graduate school before they get admitted. It is also a chance to get the feel of their particular program, faculty members, and potential advisors. You may want to check whether your graduate program has several aligned professors to serve as a safeguard.

An interview with a faculty member may be in order during this visit. It is also possible to set up an appointment beforehand with a faculty member you think might be a good fit as your graduate school advisor. This means you can ask them grad school interview questions to help you make an important decision.

But before you can get into interview day, you must first make sure you conduct initial research on potential advisors’ backgrounds, published work, and other information that you can look up beforehand.

You can also find out how current graduate students have made their decisions, so reaching out to them can also be a good idea. They must have insights into specific schools, graduate programs, labs, projects, and other opportunities that you may not be aware of yet.

Other Sources of Information

A good student not only asks the right questions (and asks them the right way) but also looks for all the sources of information they can find on their potential advisors. After all, not all graduate programs can offer the best options for you.

While a University’s website can offer useful preliminary information like a faculty member’s specialty topics and expertise, they may not necessarily answer all your questions. Some of these sites can be too sparse, after all.

If possible, another potentially good source of information is to ask alumni who have been advisees of the potential advisors you have in mind and present graduate students who are part of research groups you may potentially be belonging to pretty soon.

By reaching out to them—either formally or in less formal settings—you can potentially get insights about a professor/professors that you may have in mind, such as management styles, their field/s of expertise, the overall culture in their research group, and more.

This may be more research-intensive, but it pays to look at past alumni’s research work and theses/dissertations. This can also give you a big-picture view of the overall intellectual direction, as well as the topics/areas that are discussed or not discussed, giving you an insight into the expertise of a department’s faculty where you’ll be choosing your potential advisor.


Graduate School Interview Questions to Ask Potential Advisors

It might not be possible to cover all the interview questions that are integral when it comes to choosing your potential grad school advisor, but the following lists include general questions that are often asked about and interview questions that go beyond the surface-level information.

Questions to Ask in the Initial Meeting

Questions to Ask in the Initial Meeting - Image

Do you think we have mutual research interests?

It is crucial to find out whether your potential advisor’s and your research interests are a good match. This ensures your goals fit with their knowledge and expertise, and they can better help you with the direction of your graduate school requirements.

They will understand your challenges and give you the advice and support you need to have a good grad school experience.

What progress do you expect from a student in the course of a semester?

This question isn’t necessarily one of the first ones you’ll be asking, but it is nevertheless important. Your major goals as a graduate student are, of course, tied to the University’s academic calendar, the length of a degree program, and the maximum number of years you are allowed.

However, a potential may also expect you to deliver on specific major milestones in your research.

This can help you plan out your research, especially if your topic requires significant amounts of fieldwork or requires experiments that take specific lengths of time to conduct and accomplish.  

Knowing your advisor’s expected research progress can give you an insight into how they will handle your progress during the evaluation period. How are they going to guide you when you are thriving or struggling? It is vital that you understand specific milestones that you need to work towards.

Are you currently open to taking students in?

This is a no-brainer for most students, but this is one of the most crucial initial questions to ask. It also doesn’t hurt to follow up with why this is the case if the answer is no. For one reason or another, some professors may not be open to taking on a new student.

Are there other faculty you think I’d be a good match for?

At the graduate level, University departments tend to be tight-knit communities. Barring any potential issues of rivalry and internal politics between faculty members (which does happen), a potential advisor who can’t take you in may have someone else in the department in mind whom they feel will be a better fit for you.

What is the advisor’s formal training/background/Ph.D.?

You will have gained an initial picture of this at your pre-interview preparatory research stage, but it is always much better to hear it from the potential advisors themselves. Knowing their academic backgrounds helps you understand the approaches they tend to take to research problems.

You will have gained an initial picture of this at your pre-interview preparatory research stage, but it is always much better to hear it from the potential advisors themselves. Knowing their academic backgrounds helps you understand the approaches they tend to take to research problems.

Questions to Ask to Ensure the Right Student-Advisor Fit

Questions to Ask to Ensure the Right Student-Advisor Fit

Do you think you are more of a ‘hands-on’ or ‘hands-off’ advisor?

This question may sound a bit nuanced, but understanding the guiding style of your potential advisor can help you adjust your expectations or reflect on the guidance you may need. It also helps you suss out your potential advisor’s management style.

It’s up to you as a student whether your working style fits their approach, whether they tend to keep a close eye on their advisees or give them a lot of wiggle room. In the extreme, working with a hands-on advisor may feel stuffy, and hands-off advisors may feel too distant and absent.

Ultimately, it is a good time for you to think about how you would want to be guided. You may prefer going away from meetings with a set of tasks that you have decided with your advisor during your meeting. Or you may want to be free to work out different methods without that much pressure from your advisor.

Some advisors may have more time to be as hands-on as possible, especially with pre-tenured professors. Students may find themselves working directly with their advisors multiple times a week.

They may also be able to collaborate on funding-related tasks. Students working under tenured professors, on the other hand, may only get to have a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with their advisor.

What qualities do you value most in a graduate student?

To establish your working relationship, you may want to ask your potential advisor this question. They may be particular about timeliness and punctuality.

They may have a very structured way of doing things, so you must be mindful of meeting deadlines and following through with your progress. You may need keen attention to detail and the ability to think for yourself.

What is the best way to get in touch?

Some graduate program faculty may have their preferred channel of communication. It is vital to establish this with your potential choice first, as this will dictate how your communication process will unfold in the long run.

You will want to stick to a particular medium to avoid confusion and ensure you are both on the same page. This will make sure your advisor will be able to get your messages and other questions promptly.

How often do you expect to meet, talk, or email? Is there a way to establish a periodic communication schedule?

Another consideration when it comes to communicating with your graduate program advisor is to set expectations around your meetings.

Establishing a workable periodic communication schedule can help you manage your time properly and effectively. This ensures you won’t miss any communication exchanges with your particular advisor.

How often do you meet individually with your students?

If you wish to negotiate your communication schedule with your advisor, asking them the frequency with which they meet their students and fellows can give you a feel about their preferences and style, prompting you to adjust your own expectations and demands.

It will be easier to compromise if you know what is on their plate and how their routine usually goes.

What is the culture in your research group?

Research groups are collaborative spaces for students and faculty members working on similar, complementary, and/or parallel research areas. A culture of regular communication between its members is de rigueur.

It is important early on to know the level of depth to which you are expected to work with other researchers in the group, any specific practices, protocols, or procedures, as well as any inputs or deliverables that may be expected of you.

Does your research group have regular group meetings? If so, how frequently?

This question eventually ties into knowing the overall management style that your potential advisor prefers, whether they tend to be hands-on with their students or be more lenient. This also ties into the question of a particular research group’s culture.

This will help you be better prepared with any required output or create meaningful input for your co-researchers when these meetings are due. That way, you don’t go to meetings empty-handed, and a research group’s members can mutually maximize their time.

If you were doing my intended research topic, what direction would you take?

This can be a complicated question, and the answer may be nuanced, but it is nevertheless an interesting hypothetical question to ask. You can potentially gain many insights into a professor’s expertise, the areas/subtopics they prefer to dwell on, and more.

This question also connects well with their past research, which you may have already learned about while at the preparatory stage.

What kind of student progress do you expect throughout the semester?

This question isn’t necessarily one of the first ones you’ll be asking, but is nevertheless important. Your primary goals as a graduate student are, of course, tied to the University’s academic calendar, the length of a degree program, and the maximum number of years you are allowed.

However, a potential may also expect you to deliver on significant milestones in your research.

This can help you plan out your research, especially if your topic requires significant amounts of fieldwork or requires experiments that take specific lengths of time to conduct and accomplish.  

What conferences/how many conferences are we expected to work towards every year?

This question ties into the overall image of a particular research group’s culture. Graduate student conferences are major highlights of a student’s time in graduate school.

These events provide students with an excellent opportunity to present their work, as well as learn any new advances in their fields of interest (including those that may have direct implications on their research) and potentially network with their fellow scholars.

These conferences need good preparation, and the lead-up to a particular one can be a stressful time. Also, your potential advisor may prefer a particular set of conferences over others.

It is crucial to ask this in advance to anticipate any goals or deliverables, as well as make all the necessary preparations, from your output to registering and submitting in advance, as well as cost considerations.

How do you motivate your students if they are struggling?

This question is an insight into their management style. Graduate-level scholarly work is highly rewarding, but like anything, there will be highs and lows throughout the process. A graduate student may invariably have to go through a rough patch or two.

Knowing your potential advisor’s approach to keeping their advisees motivated helps you see whether they will be an excellent complement to your preferred style of working and handling any struggles.

Mentorship has a bit of a parenting aspect to it, after all, and it is important to gain insight into a potential mentor’s approach to this inevitability.

Questions to Ask to Check if Your Research Interests Fit

Questions to Ask to Check if Your Research Interests Fits - Image

Are there projects that you picture me working on and being good at?

Scouting specific projects in a lab is one of the things graduate students usually do. It won’t hurt to ask this directly from your advisor. You can ask about the projects they are working on and whether you might be a good fit to work with them.

Some advisors may tend to give students projects to work on. They might prefer you to work on a funding-related project occasionally.

How much freedom will I have in choosing my own projects?

At times, professors allow graduate students to select projects of their own. This is important if you have something in mind that you are planning to work on. This way, you can determine if they will be willing to support your future ideas in a specific direction.

Do you provide the students with their projects, or can they pick their own?

As a potential incoming member of a professor’s research group under a potential advisor, it is also essential to know this in advance. They may have a pre-existing research area in mind that they want to address and are thinking of assigning to an incoming student, or they may also prefer to work with what you bring to the table.

Knowing this helps you anticipate potentially working on topics that may not entirely align with what you have in mind.

Do you have other students in mind whom you are interested in working with? What would they be working on for their projects?

It’s safe to say that for a specific academic year, you wouldn’t have been the first student to approach the professor you are interested in working with. Other students may have already come to them with research problems that they find interesting or that they deem to fit into the overall direction of their research group.

These ideas may or may not be similar or parallel to yours, and this will help you answer the question of the best-fitting professor who can adequately guide you on your work. This can also give you an idea of other incoming students who may become part of the same research group as you, students whom you will eventually collaborate with.

Would I be able to contribute to an important project through my own line of work?

Some professors may prefer to pair first-year students with senior graduate students. You might need to work with a group as part of a large collaboration. Knowing how much interaction is expected and how much it will determine your research project can help you adapt your thinking accordingly.

It is also worth asking who gets specific responsibilities on a project and what contributions you will be expected to make.

We’re certain of one thing—your search for more information on picking the best graduate degree or school landed you here. Let our experts help guide your through the decision making process with thoughtful content written by experts.