Are admissions officers professors?

Deans and other high-level administrative officers often start out as faculty, so it makes sense that they would be involved in the admissions process — determining who will shape the new class — earlier on.

How are PhD admissions decided?

The admissions committee bases its decision on a number of pieces of information including GPA (Grade Point Average), GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) scores, statement of purpose, references, interviews, and, for international students, TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores.

How much influence do individual faculty have on admissions decisions?

In some fields where graduate students do apply to a broad program rather than to work in a particular lab, individual faculty may have relatively small influence on the decisions of the admissions committee. The admissions committee in these cases may simply look for the students with the most promising records.

Can an assistant professor supervise a PhD student?

Supervising PhD students is a learning activity like most anything else. As such, it is to be expected that maybe when an assistant professor supervises her/his first student, s/he may do things that should would handle differently later on. But this is not tied to the status of the person, but to her/his experience in advising.

When do assistant professors start advising students?

In most of the schools I know about (mostly fairly elite schools, and mostly in CS and engieering), assistant professors start advising students as soon as they officially join the faculty. The faculty candidates most in demand are often offered startup packages that will fund a student or two until they can start bringing in funding on their own.

When should I Change my advisor in a PhD program?

If you really venture to the assistant professor expertise, you would change advisor only when you have actually done the research and are writing up the dissertation, which usually takes a year. A doctoral candidate is really on their own when it comes to completing the original research culminating in a defended dissertation.