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]> 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.