The campus visit - part three

Perhaps the most exciting part of the visit is chatting with potential labmates.

You'll probably spend more time every day interacting with other grad students and postdocs in your lab than with your advisor. Your labmates are the people you'll first go to when you have an idea that might be the awesomest thing ever or really stupid and you need to check. They're probably following the literature more closely than your adviser, and they'll be the ones who forward you cool articles related to your work. They'll almost certainly be more familiar with the methods you're trying to use.

It's really important that you at least slightly like your labmates, on average.

Speaking from personal experience, a single curmudgeonly or even pathological labmate is endurable if you're surrounded by an otherwise happy, creative, and amiable group of people.

Talk to as many potential labmates as possible. Talk to them about their research, and see if the conversation takes off. You can also ask about the same topics you discuss with your potential adviser. How did they arrive at their current projects? How would they describe their adviser's mentoring style? What conferences have they been to? How's the funding situation? With whom do they collaborate in the lab, in the department, and at other schools?

The point isn't to search for dirt about the potential adviser or anyone else. That said, if a potential labmate makes any suggestive comments, follow up as tactfully as you can. Face-to-face conversations are practically the only option in this case. I was once in the awkward position of meeting with a potential advisee of a professor (not my adviser) who was severely negligent as a scientist and a mentor. The advisee didn't ask about the professor's advising habits or working style. I compromised by suggesting a few pseudo-reasons why another program might be a better fit.

My scientific development might owe more to a superfantastic labmate than to my adviser. This labmate was an extremely clever older grad student who decided early on to involve me in her brainstorming. She was generous and encouraging, and we wrote some kickass papers together.

Science is intensely collaborative, and the more you like your collaborators, the more fun it all is.