Why Writing Reviews is the Biggest Support
- 1. Reviews are the Most Valuable
- 2. Everyone Can Review Their Advisors
- 3. Writing Reviews Can Be Easy
- 4. How to Write Reviews Safely
- 5. Comments Based on Personal Experience
- 6. We Have No Motivation to Sell User Information
- 7. Why Use a School Email to Register
- 8. What to Do About False Reviews on the Website
- 9. I Want to Help My Past Self
This content was automatically generated by gpt-4o-mini (No human review). The original post is in Chinese.
PI Review was founded in July 2021 as a website specifically designed for graduate students to evaluate their advisors. Our goal is to help future students make better choices when selecting their PhD advisors.
I saw a comment on Zhihu asking if there was a way to donate, as someone wanted to show support for PI Review. So, I wanted to write an article to introduce this. If you want to support this website, there are many ways to do so, and donating is definitely the last option that comes to my mind. The first way I want to discuss is writing reviews; I can cover other ways to support us later.
Reviews are the Most Valuable
If you can take the time to write a thoughtful review on the PI Review website, that is the biggest support you can give us. Because no matter how many features the website has or how beautiful the interface is, if there are too few reviews, everything else is in vain. Without reviews, we cannot help more people or create a greater social impact.
Everyone Can Review Their Advisors
Therefore, if you have experience as a graduate student, you can register an account on the website and start reviewing your advisor. Whether you are very satisfied with your advisor or have deep resentment, even if you think your advisor is unremarkable, you can still write something that may help others. Some people feel they cannot write a review until they graduate, fearing that a single comment might reveal their identity to their advisor. I completely understand this concern, but writing a review does not necessarily mean you have to share your personal experiences. As long as you avoid storytelling, examples, and personal grievances, writing a review can still be very safe.
Writing Reviews Can Be Easy
Currently, the website recommends evaluating mentors from five dimensions: the mentor’s guidance style, expectations for PhD students, funding and support, research, and laboratory atmosphere. These are the most important aspects I considered when choosing a mentor, and under each dimension, there are some questions listed as prompts. So even if you don’t know how to review your mentor, just selecting and answering some of those questions will already result in a rich and helpful review.
Don’t feel burdened when writing a review, thinking that you must provide a comprehensive evaluation of your mentor; otherwise, it would be irresponsible. Also, don’t feel that you have to write a long review and answer all the questions. I don’t think that’s necessary. If you have the time and are willing to do so, that’s great. But if you’re busy with work, you can start with a shorter review and revise it later when you have more time. The length of the review doesn’t matter; sharing useful information is what truly helps and supports this site.
How to Write Reviews Safely
When it comes to writing reviews safely and protecting your privacy, my suggestion is to share as much objective content as possible. For example, how often the group holds meetings, whether the mentor is hands-on or more hands-off, how many papers need to be published to graduate, and the average time it takes for seniors in the group to graduate, as well as the availability of research funding. Sharing this kind of information is very safe because anyone in the group might have the same answers, and the mentor won’t be able to guess who wrote the review. However, this information will also be helpful for future students. For instance, if a group has very little funding and a long graduation timeline, that’s clearly a red flag.
Comments Based on Personal Experience
If you have already graduated and feel secure, not worried about your advisor guessing who you are, then you can share your personal experiences. Especially when you think this advisor is terrible and want to warn future students not to work under them, sharing personal experiences usually has a better effect. People love reading stories, and stories have the best dissemination effect. For example, I saw a review on a website:
This advisor is a huge pit, definitely don’t come here. Remember to thank me later.
I think this review might be a warning, but it could also be written by a student with a personal grudge against the advisor. This review lacks any specific content, objective facts, or personal experiences, so I don’t consider it a high-quality review. However, if this person listed many examples and detailed why this advisor is a huge pit from various aspects, the credibility would be very high. I might directly blacklist this advisor and not consider joining their group.
Of course, I still hope everyone shares as much useful information as possible when writing reviews, but they should also be aware of protecting themselves. I completely understand that not everyone has the courage to publicly stand up and point out how terrible their advisor is, especially given the power imbalance between advisors and students. There are many concerns, including the fear that the advisor has too much control, which could affect one’s future even if they are not in that group. Some advisors may have poor character, leading to worries about potential retaliation. Therefore, I believe that if there are such concerns, when writing reviews, it’s better to share less specific personal experiences and more objective information that everyone in the group knows and has reached a consensus on.
We Have No Motivation to Sell User Information
First of all, reviews posted on the website are by default anonymous, meaning that even usernames are not displayed (yes, the website’s username is not very useful). Some users are concerned about exposing their personal information because they registered with their school email, fearing that their professors might access their email through the website and thus hesitate to leave reviews. I think these concerns are understandable, but they are completely unnecessary. Our website is completely independent; we do not share user information with any third parties, let alone provide user emails to professors. I’ve heard that some previous professor review sites even charged to delete negative reviews, which is simply unbelievable.
I am one of the founders of the USTC Course Review Community. In the seven years since the establishment of the review community, we have received several complaints from teachers and have gone through a few “public relations crises.” Some teachers have asked us to delete negative reviews, claiming that those reviews are personal attacks against them, while others have requested students’ emails, saying they want the school to expel those students. We have experienced these complaints, and we have never handed over students’ personal information. We directly told the teachers that we would not provide students’ emails and that we would not delete the reviews because we believe they are not personal attacks.
Therefore, I hope users can trust our website. From the very beginning, I made it clear that the review information on our site will always be publicly available for free and will not become something that requires payment to access. After all, those who write reviews are not receiving any compensation! I have a low opinion of such a business model. The original intention of me and a few other developers in creating this website was not to make money, as we can find well-paying jobs. This website is just a hobby, aimed at doing something we find meaningful. So, there’s no need to worry that we would delete reviews or sell user information due to pressure or temptation from professors. I can’t think of any situation where we would need to do that.
Why Use a School Email to Register
We certainly want to protect user privacy and also hope to increase the number of reviews on the site. Based on these two considerations, there is no need to require an edu email for registration. The reason we chose to use school emails for registration is simply to raise the bar for writing reviews, thereby improving the quality of the reviews. So this is also a balance. If there are no registration restrictions on the site, anyone can register, which could lead to negative reviews aimed at discrediting mentors, spamming, or even advertising.
To improve the quality of reviews on the site, I initially implemented various restrictions, not only requiring a school email for registration but also limiting users to reviewing only mentors from the same school, to ensure that the user had indeed studied at that school. However, I later found that some people lose access to their school email after graduation, or visiting scholars never received a school email, and in these cases, they also have a need to write reviews. Additionally, the increase in the number of reviews was too slow, so I lifted this restriction. There is also an assumption that those who lose access to their school email after graduation might have other edu emails, such as if they become postdocs, or they should have access to at least one email from their undergraduate or graduate studies. But in reality, this assumption does not always hold, so I will need to address this issue later.
In addition, there are some implicit restrictions on the site, such as limiting a user to a maximum of 10 reviews. My reasoning is that it is unlikely for one person to have 10 mentors. Even if they were in several groups during their undergraduate studies, switched groups during graduate school, and went to several groups during their PhD, having 10 mentors is already quite a lot. This way, it can limit the number of reviews a single account can generate. Of course, it seems that I might be overthinking this, as currently, there are only about 50 reviews on the entire site, and my concern about review spamming seems to be unfounded. If we did not require an edu email for registration, then there would be no way to impose these restrictions; one person could have countless emails and write countless reviews.
Of course, after my explanations, if there are still concerns about this, or if people are unwilling to register an account or hesitant to write reviews because of it; if the number of reviews on the site does not increase over time, I may consider lifting this restriction. However, for now, I still hope to maintain this barrier.
What to Do About False Reviews on the Website
Some people say that if someone maliciously defames a mentor on the website, or if a mentor asks students to post good reviews, then such a website is useless and not meaningful. I think that’s unreasonable. While we cannot completely prevent people from posting fake good or bad reviews, our website has many mechanisms to address these situations. Just like when shopping on Taobao, where you should read multiple reviews, our website also provides various ways for different voices to be heard.
For example, in the case of a review that defames a mentor, the best scenario is for someone with knowledge of the situation to speak up. You can respond to that review, stating that the mentor is not like that and that the review is nonsense; you are completely entitled to express your opinion. Someone with knowledge can also write their own review to share their perspective on that mentor. Similarly, if a mentor is asking students to post good reviews, the best response is for someone with knowledge to counter that by replying or writing a review. This is why I encourage everyone who has done research under that mentor to write something, as the more reviews there are, the more valuable they become.
Also, a mentor is not necessarily all good or all bad; a mentor who is great in one student’s eyes may be seen as terrible by another, possibly due to favoritism. Therefore, the information in reviews should always be taken as a reference. Besides reading reviews, you can also proactively contact students who have graduated from that lab or other students in the department to inquire about their opinions on the mentor.
As a website, we cannot determine whether a review is genuine or just made up, so we are unable to handle most complaints about reviews. For example, if someone complains:
The content of this review is false; this mentor is not like that in my eyes. I suggest deleting this review.
I cannot make that judgment, and I cannot delete or hide the review based on that. Therefore, I encourage users not to file complaints in such cases, as we cannot act as judges. If you have a different opinion, you should publicly express it and refute the review. Currently, responses to reviews on the website are anonymous, so there’s no need to worry about revealing your identity.
I Want to Help My Past Self
In the past seven years, the development and growth of the USTC Course Review Community have shown me that the key to our success lies not in how user-friendly the website is or how comprehensive the data is. Indeed, we have put a lot of effort into designing and maintaining this site, but I believe the crucial factor is the trust users have in this website. In the first couple of years, there were very few reviews on the course review community, and I was quite worried. I even organized an event where users could write reviews to receive books; if someone got 10 likes on their review, I would send them my teaching materials. However, it seemed that I didn’t send out a single book. Over time, as our reputation grew and more reviews accumulated, we entered a positive feedback loop. Now, new reviews come in every day, which makes us very happy.
So now I have shifted my focus to a graduate advisor evaluation website because choosing an advisor has a much greater impact on a student than choosing a course. When I was a freshman, I didn’t know which courses to choose and could only ask senior students I knew for information, which I found very inconvenient. So, I gathered a few friends to create a course evaluation website for USTC.
During my graduate studies, I faced the issue of choosing an advisor again. Before I joined my first lab, a senior told me that this advisor had ample funding and was very nice. However, a year after I joined the lab, the advisor ran out of funding and told me to find a teaching assistant position on my own, without offering any help. Even when I contacted the department’s secretary to apply for funding, the secretary said I needed my advisor to send an email, but my advisor was unwilling to help me with that. Later, I reached out to the student union, which said they could try to help me find a teaching assistant or other positions, and they emailed our department head (who had completely ignored my previous attempts to contact him). But my advisor was extremely angry about my contacting the union. Around 9 PM, he called me and said I had to either stop contacting the union or leave his lab, suggesting I should just graduate with my master’s degree. That call lasted over 30 minutes, during which he repeatedly told me how inappropriate my actions were, how I was tarnishing the department’s reputation, and how serious the consequences were. I was so scared on the other end of the line that I couldn’t say anything.
I had no choice but to switch labs. Before choosing a new advisor, I did a lot of research, but I found that many advisors didn’t respond to my emails, so my options were limited. I switched to a new lab, but I was also dissatisfied with my new advisor’s attitude towards students and how he managed the lab. He initially promised to provide funding support after a trial semester, but after working for free for a semester, he still refused to give me a research assistant position. Even when I sent him two or three emails asking about funding for the next semester, he didn’t reply. I asked the secretary for help, but he didn’t respond to her either. At that time, I had a potential teaching assistant position, and the instructor was very supportive of my work and willing to offer me the position. However, being a teaching assistant as a graduate student is very time-consuming, so I preferred to secure research funding instead. But I couldn’t keep occupying the teaching assistant position indefinitely; the instructor wanted a prompt response, or he would have to offer the position to someone else. In this situation, I emailed my second advisor, hoping for a response. I explained that if he couldn’t provide me with research funding, I would have to accept the teaching assistant position quickly, or I wouldn’t have any living expenses. As a result, my second advisor delayed for a week or two without replying, and I couldn’t understand his indifferent attitude. He was present at our daily meetings and even mentioned watching a domestic TV series, so I knew he wasn’t too busy to respond. Overall, I was very disappointed. Finally, after my persistent inquiries, he told me I still needed to take the teaching assistant position and that he needed to observe for a while longer. I couldn’t accept this outcome, and I didn’t want to stay in this lab for another 3-4 years. I was very disappointed with our school and department, so I chose to withdraw from the PhD program and graduated with my master’s degree to find a job. Another colleague who joined the lab with me also chose to leave the lab and drop out a week before I did. I believe my decision was the right one.
Therefore, based on my personal experiences, I genuinely hope to help future students. I wish I had the opportunity to learn more about an advisor before joining a lab, rather than realizing how wrong my choice was only after joining. We can find an advisor’s academic papers and research directions on the website, but that is not the most important information when choosing an advisor. I believe what matters most is how the advisor guides and treats students, what kind of support they can provide, including academic guidance, funding, communication opportunities, and whether the graduation requirements are reasonable, as well as the atmosphere in the lab. These factors significantly affect the quality of a PhD student’s research and life over 4-5 years or even longer, impacting their academic career.
Ultimately, I want to help my past self.
Writing reviews is our greatest support — PI Review
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