How many students are typical for an advisor? I am an undergraduate student in China, majoring in chemistry. I am now considering which advisors would be most suitable for my future research.

Actually, I have been working in a professor's lab since over a year at my university and I am interested in their research topics. What concerns me is that he recruits many students. He is the only professor in our group with over 10 graduate students, expected to increase to 14–16 students next year (depending on whether I join this lab). I am hesitant because I unsure whether he would have the time to provide me guidance with so many students.

How many students are typical for a professor?

[EDIT]

Our group typically hosts 1-2 undergraduates per year.
It depends on many factors:


Does the professor have any intense other duties like teaching, committee work, own research, being an editor, writing grants, etc. or can they focus on supervising?
Does the professor delegate supervisory work, e.g., do PhD students have postdocs or similar as a first person to go to?
Is there a healthy communication and collaboration within the group? Is everybody roughly informed what everybody else’s areas of expertise are so they can seek help (e.g., from the resident programming expert) directly without going through the supervisor? Is this encouraged by the supervisor?
How much supervision does a typical student in your field require?
How efficient is the professor in supervising?


Due to these factors, the group size you mention can work very well, but may also be a total disaster. As it’s impossible to judge these factors as an outsider, the best way is to talk to actual supervisees and look at the graduation statistics of the group (if available). If you are actually working in a professor’s group, you should be able to assess this better than anybody else.