Thank you em89, your advice was really helpful. I would follow the same, once again I m really grateful for your advice.

But what if get I get accepted and later when I talk to students I realise, the advisor ain't best fit for me or I ain't best fit for the advisor and the lab ?

Yes I m emailing prospective students of advisors enquiring about their experience. I have looked at publication history and other stuff and narrowed down a list of 4 professors and am currently talking to the students of two professors and enquiring their experience.

I m applying for my PhD this fall. But as I started mailing alumni and students of potential thesis advisors to enquire about advisors, I realised it's extremely hassle filled and time consuming, and the worst part is I can ask very few or limited questions about my advisor and that risks my PhD as I wouldn't know.as much as possible about my advisor. What can I do ?

In US PhD system, the newly admitted PhD students spend the first complete year doing different lab rotations so that they get acquainted with the different lab cultures, lab groups, their potential supervisors, etc and chose their lab by the end of year and so they get to make a more informed decision on choosing the supervisor and lab after careful analysis and exposure thereby making better matches between PhD students and supervisors and lab but in UK PhD system we need to chose the supervisor and the lab prior to admission and thereby increased mismatch takes place. Do people over here think that we should also have the US system so that we also get ti make more informed decisions??????????

Hey Kareem congratulations , and really a salute to your braveness and your persistence, but if it's not too much to ask can you please share the name of this university so that it would help people like us looking to apply in , plz.

Hey sorry to hear about all of it you are going through, but if it's not too much to ask can you please share the name of this university so that it would help people like us looking to apply in , plz.

Although there are fully completed profiles and CVS of professors out there on university websites, although we have systems like lab rotations at universities which actively encourage scholars to try out labs and groups and supervisors before actually signing up for a PhD , although there are orientation programs and so many other services provided for helping scholars find a best fit supervisor, why does still a mismatch between a supervisor and a scholar take place which had even lead to high attrition rates of PhD ???? Where are we lagging????

But guys that still dosent answer my question, the thing I m still asking is:
What to look in a supervisor's profile, in a lab group's profile, in the lab environment before signing up and where to lookup these things ????????

I'm a first year PhD student and I somehow realised that entire concept of lab rotation is a complete waste of time, coz obviously we all find and chose our doctoral advisor even before we apply for the grad school and then we get an informal approval from him and then we apply to grad school under his guidance so obviously we already are set with a doctoral advisor and a lab and actually spending some weeks in a lab dosent really tell you a lot and that's what I have felt actually it doesn't tell you anything about the supervisor or even the group and maybe it may make.you a little aware of lab environment that's all so basically it's a complete waste and it's not just me who's feeling this but the metrics like PhD completion rate mostly across all disciplines if 50% and a major reason for a lot of people to drop.out is their mismatch with their supervisor and that clearly is the failure of also the entire concept of lab rotation , so why dj we still haaaabbbveeee trhhhhiiiidsddss , lab rotation concept fails entirely and not at all useful and just a complete waste of timeeeeee???????

Hey everybody, I m a first year PhD student and soon will be taking up comprehensive exam, and I just wanted to share this thing that's been bothering me and am expecting some suggestions from all you guys;

My supervisor seemed a great guy at the he begining when checked his publications, and his previous jobs and his attendance in various conference and everything and all, his profile seemed one of the best and so I applied and joined in his lab but as time passed I realised he's never ever ever available to me , we never have advisory meetings frequently and whenever I need him he's not at all available and the few times he was available to me and when I approached him with some doubts and complications with some research methodology he literally complicated the stuff too much that I lost track completely and later had to sort it myself after quite long and the lab sucks, not the equipment but the environment , the people , and all although their projects and research are not that bad:

So my question is where did I gi wrong in analysing the lab and the my supervisor and what do you guys best recomend the way to analyse a research supervisor , a research group , and the lab environment and where to lookthese things up and how to find out???????? Plz someone tell me although I can't change anything now but I still am just very curious to know where did i.go wrong????