Policies: Policy on matching of students and advisors

Prior to admission, applicants may express their interest in being advised by any member of the training faculty, but faculty members are not able to provide opinions to applicants on likelihood of admission.

Students admitted into the program may express interest in being advised by any member of the training faculty, and faculty may express their interest in advising any accepted student. Accepted students may therefore receive one or more letters from potential advisors to welcome them into the program and to possibly invite them to join their research group or to offer them the opportunity to do a rotation. Such welcome letters are strongly encouraged any time after the admission. Faculty acknowledge their acceptance of program policies (including financial responsibility) and obtain written approval from the Directors prior to extending an invitation to a student to join their research group. Invitations to do rotations do not require prior approval. 

Students who have accepted admission may choose to accept an invitation to join a specific research group anytime prior to the beginning of the Fall term.

Alternatively, they may choose to do from one to three rotations during the Fall term according to a schedule to be arranged by the Admissions Committee.  In this case, students must provide the Admissions Committee with the total number of rotations that they wish to do and a ranked list of rotation choices (noting if any of these have already offered a rotation) by 5:00 pm on the Monday after the Fall Retreat and faculty must provide the Admissions Committee with a ranked list of students that they are willing to supervise for rotations (noting to which they have already offered a rotation) by the same deadline.  The Admissions Committee will create a schedule based on these lists, and inform students and faculty.  The order of the rotations will be determined as needed in order to accommodate schedules.

At any point during the rotation process, an advisor may make an offer to join his/her research group, again with the prior approval of the program directors.  However, students may accept an invitation to join a particular advisor only after completing all of their scheduled rotations. 

At the end of the rotation period, each student who has not received any offers or who has chosen not to accept any received offers will provide the Directors with a list of advisors that they would like to work with (ranked in order of preference). In parallel, faculty will provide the Directors with a list of students (ranked in order of preference) that they are willing to advise and the total number of students that they are able to support.  The Directors and Associate Directors will then match students and advisors and inform each student of the advisor to whom they have been assigned. 

Each student must accept an advising offer or be assigned to an advisor by the beginning of the Spring semester of their first year.