from an interview of Dr David Edelman, a neuroscientist, by Mike Lisiesky:

Interviews on Consciousness – David Edelman

Being a student, I’m interested in the process of becoming a scientist. Do you have any comments or advice for people who might what to pursue research in the area of animal cognition and/or consciousness?

Most of my advice is very practical. Research the graduate program you decide on really well, and talk to the faculty and some students from the program. Following from that, pursue somebody who’s a strong mentor, both in an intellectual and a practical sense. My graduate advisor at Penn was a very smart guy, he was very personable, and I liked him a lot, but he wasn’t an activist advisor. I saw around me, people outside of anthropology, people in biology, their mentor took it upon themselves to help shepherd that person out into the world, beyond simply reading the dissertation and suggesting things, really figuring out how to get that person ensconced or active in the career. This is very important and this is not necessarily that easy to get at, but you can sort of look at people’s track records and see who their graduate students were and what they have done with themselves, and that’s probably a fairly good indication of how active the mentor was in getting them out there. That seems like sort of far down the pipe for any potential graduate student to consider, but the more and more I think about it, the more I believe that that’s an important area to bone up on before you take the plunge.