I am meeting with a prospective thesis supervisor next week and have no idea what I should be asking to determine if we’d make a good match. Obviously, he should have experience and interest in the area of my topic, but what else? Perhaps how many other theses he’s supervised? Availability for meetings?
Yes–you want to know if his management style is a good fit for you. You may want to know what his former students are doing now. And how many of them graduated in a timely manner. Is he very hands on? Very hands off? Will you be working as a team or mostly on your own?
In addition to the day-to-day stuff, you want to get a sense of how he expects the advisor/advisee relationship to work, and what motivates him to work on a problem. If there’s a mismatch in either of those things, it’s not going to work.
Ask him what he will expect from you. This can be big stuff, like publications and conference presentations. But also ask about the ordinary expectations of when you should get your ass in to the lab/office and what sort of hours and pace you should be working at. Some advisers demand long hours and a rigid schedule, others are more lax as long as you make decent progress.
Conversely, ask what you can expect from him. How frequently will you meet to discuss your progress? Is it ok to knock on his door whenever you have something interesting to share, or do you need to make every appointment with his assistant weeks in advance? What resources and opportunities can he provide?
Also, you ask this sort of thing from his other students, preferably somewhere like a bar where they can share their honest opinions. Some advisers can promise you the world, but once they’ve hooked you they won’t deliver (I say, bitterly…).
Important question: what field?
Ask stuff like what is the annual process. E.g. is there a conference that is an annual big deal in November?
Whenever we have grad students visit, there is usually ample opportunity for the prospective to talk to current students away from professorial ears and eyes. So the students can hopefully give responses freer from bias (“Dr. X gets grouchy when deadlines are close.”)
How flexible are the labs at that school? In other words, if things don’t mesh with him, can you switch to another lab (presumably before starting the core thesis work).
Are you clinically insane? Are you currently carrying on a secret affair with a postdoc that will cause you to not bother to apply for funding for my research, and then leave for Switzerland with it half-done to get away from your vengeful ex-wife?
Unfortunately, you probably can’t actually ask those. But try to sniff out the answers, anyway.
Probably the most important thing is how well you click. My daughter’s advisor is considered quite odd, but she and my daughter really hit it off during the interview, and it has worked out well.
If you can subtly ask how long it takes people to finish that would be good, but you don’t want to make it sound like you are racing to get through. Availability is good also - not just meetings per week, but group meetings also.
Support and funding. Is there money for you, and is he actively pursuing grants. It appears that some students are expected to look for grants themselves these days.
Finally, if you want to go into academia, ask about publications. If your adviser is going for tenure he will appreciate any publications you can contribute to. How many papers does he submit a year, and what is his policy about giving grad students credit? Do they support conference attendance? Is he well hooked into the publication network, by which I mean is he on editorial boards and program committees? If he is, his work is respected, and you might benefit from a halo effect when you submit joint papers. Ask his opinion of conferences and journals. In most areas there are high prestige conferences and journals and low prestige ones, and hiring committees look at this very seriously.
Awesome advice so far guys, thanks.
Just to clarify a few things: I’m doing an MA in Environment and Management. I will likely not need access to a lab, my thesis will focus more on literature reviews, surveys and published data.
It is a program for working professionals, so I am working full time as well, and am doing coursework. The program sets out my deadlines for me - my proposal is due in May 2012, poster session is in October 2012 and thesis submission is September 2013. I can ask for extensions, but it’s costly (I think $1500 a semester). The supervisor in question was part of the list of previously approved supervisors supplied by the University. Of course, I can find my own if I want as long as they meet specific criteria, but I’ve been having trouble with that so far.
I hadn’t thought of asking for references for his previous supervisory work, actually, that’s a great idea!
So far I know that he lives in the same city as me, runs a consulting company in a similar industry to me, and that’s about it.
By the way, I am not in the same city as my University and only attend actual in-class courses for three weeks a year (in October - just got back a month and a bit ago). They do have agreements with other Canadian Universities, so I can head over to the University of Calgary (where I am) and access the library and whatever else I need.
What kind of availability do they have.
My undergrad thesis advisor (ChemE, Spain): that school had an “open doors” policy (you could walk in pretty much any time), but I was doing the research long-distance; I could contact him by phone (email whazzat?) at any time, though. When I needed to speak with him, I called him, we set up an appointment, I went in, we talked, see you again in a couple of months. He reviewed my draft for content, coherence, etc. and my slides to verify that they matched the draft - if he hadn’t liked it, he would have told me what to change, but not too much on “how”: he might have said “clarify this part”, but wouldn’t have suggested actual phrasing. We couldn’t have our vivas until the advisor thought we were ready for it.
My last graduate advisor (Translation, Scotland): we had three months to write the work; she was on vacation and unreachable for all but the last week. All she did was check whether the format I’d used matched the guidelines exactly - we evidently had different definitions of “guideline”. Even if she’d been available, they weren’t supposed to give us any actual advice, just point us to the guidelines
Under your circumstances most of what I wrote is inoperative.
Is your university giving out Ph.D’s in this area? If so, the general attitude of the supervisor is the important thing, since you are unlikely to do anything publishable, and are not expected to. The worst one to have is a perfectionist. A good one will be available, give you feedback, but be dedicated to getting you out on time assuming you hold up your part of the bargain.
The question to ask then is how many of his students finished on schedule, as compared to the department as a whole.
You have to really know the person, if at all possible. I would not select one unless I had taken at least two of his/her classes and s/he seems like a really good fit. All the questions in the world will not arrive at this location.
Also ask a) whether he/she is about to retire, and b) how his/her health is. (Mine retired right after he told me he’d be my committee chair, and then died before I defended. Obviously I had to find a replacement.)
I could write a book about this on the doctoral level. But this advice is really the most essential bit of info you need. Are you a self starter without a great need for guidance? If so, most things won’t matter. You’ll do what you need to do, the adviser is going to review and return your work, and hammer out the next stage.
I absolutely would cosign on this advice. Past behavior is indicative of future behavior. Having a class for a semester or two will give one insight into a prof’s temperament, their ability to return work, their style of feedback, etc. If you end up not wanting to kill them at that point it suggests that you might be able to foster a healthy working relationship. 
This would be great, but it’s not possible in these circumstances for a few reasons. First, I’ve so far only completed three courses, and none of the three professors are interested in my thesis topic so are not available. I did ask one of the program advisors if he would be interested in my topic and he said no. Second, the timeline is too short to be able to do this. I’ve had three courses so far, and only have two more between now and when I need to turn in my proposal.
Just to clarify a bit more, we have an assigned advisor (with the University) and then we have to find our supervisor (though the University will help if we’re really stuck). The University provided a list of previously approved supervisors, where I found this guy, but we are also able to search out our own as long as they meet certain criteria and are approved by the University.
Finding a professor within this program that is interested in a particular student’s thesis is difficult because they are so varied. For instance, one of my classmates is doing her thesis on songbird movement between sources and sinks in a small area of southern B.C., another is working on something to do with the use of mercury during gold production in Mongolia, and I’m doing my thesis on water use in shale gas fracturing. It’s such a wide variety of topics that finding a fit with a particular professor is difficult, especially if I were to seek one where I’d attended one of their courses (so far my professors have been economists and ecological scientists).
A lot of the advice you’re getting is irrelevant to your situation because it’s aimed at a person who’s picking a doctoral supervisor. That’s a completely different world, and you should have specified in your OP that you’re working towards a non-academic master’s degree.
Sorry, what do you mean by non-academic master’s degree?
I think that means any master’s degree that makes you employable outside of academia. Typically that implies more emphasis on learning relatively practical things through coursework, and less emphasis on research.
At the master’s level, there are a few programs that are more academically oriented; e.g. minimal coursework on top of full-time thesis research.
One more thing to add - understand where the advisor fits into departmental politics. Even if you and the advisor get along great, you may still run into trouble, and someone who everyone owes favors to is going to help more than someone who is looked down on.