Identifying a bad advisor (before applying) Earlier this year, I contacted this Professor (Applied Math) from a top Canadian university and we talked twice this year. He earned his PhD from an Ivy League school and must be around 60 years old. He seems to be a really nice guy, happy to have me as his student, and the university is in a city that I like a lot. However, there is something that concerns me.
He has only had four students over more than 20 years. Three of them stayed in academia in American universities, but only one of them (the youngest) is actively engaged in research in a tier 3 university (the other two are lecturers in tier 2 universities). His other student got a post-doc in a top university in the US, but returned to his home country afterwards (a developing one).
Are my concerns justified?
There is probably no issue here and the careers of his students are determined primarily by their actions, not his. It might be a function of the popularity of the subfield in which they work.
But if the professor is listed in the Mathematics Genealogy Project you can find the titles of the dissertations of the students and check for yourself whether their work was significant as students. You can also find out whether they &quot;produced&quot; any mathematical heirs.