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Hi All, I agree with Ellie. Although I think you have a good idea regarding the quality of supervisors and helping students to choose the right one, I don't think that taking a reductionist approach is the way to go forward with this. There may be many reasons as to why a student doesn't complete such as personal circumstances that doesn't reflect the supervisory relationship that may be misconstrued by merely reporting the number of completed students. Also, different students will rate different qualities in a supervisor that some will find helpful to their style and others won't. I like the suggestion of meeting and discussing things with a potential supervisor, and think this would say more to students. But I can completely see your point of finding ways of incentivising and encouraging PhD supervisors to have positive relationships with their students. Thanks, Deborah Sent from my iPhone On 28 Sep 2013, at 10:19 pm, "Eleanor Ratcliffe" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Hi Sinéad, I can see the importance of knowing what a supervisor is like before formalising one's relationship with them, but I wonder if chatting with the supervisor him/herself and their past and present students would be more helpful. It seems wrong to me to reduce one's relationship with a supervisor to a score. It makes me think of a product or a customer service experience - and isn't one's relationship with a supervisor more collaborative than that? It would seem to me to be more about finding the right "fit" for the student. I agree that knowing how many students someone has and their completion rate would be very helpful but generally speaking I think one can find these things out by having a coffee with a prospective sup before applying. These are just my thoughts, anyway. Ellie On 28 Sep 2013, at 21:50, "Sheehan, Sinead Renu" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Dear All I was what do people think of the idea of being able to publicly rate PhD supervisors (in general, not just psychology) so that other PhD students can clearly see what kind of reputation they have e.g. how many students currently and past, how many graduated, and some form of anonymous...perhaps score? based on timeliness of feedback, responsiveness and lots of other factors it might take a study to decide on. Perhaps if funding bodies were also aware of PhD students ratings' and took the ratings into account when awarding grants, then it would have an effect on the quality of supervision. I would imagine that a supervisor might care more about getting good ratings from students if it could have a knock on effect on their future chances of securing research funding. Apologies if this is the wrong forum to bring this up Sinéad School of Psychology University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013683.