Decision making-whom to accept as PhD student

This year there was a deluge of applications to join my lab.  There were applications even before our interview processes took place and of course after the candidates were selected, all of them made a beeline to my lab. Chromatin remodeling is the latest buzzword. While I can preen myself on it, it also made life difficult for me. How do I select a candidate?

The first thing is that I do not look at resumes. It does not tell me anything. Given the Indian University context, it tells me how good a student is at memorizing stuff. Beyond it I do not get any information about the student. Is she/he creative? What do they like to do? What is it that they find fascinating?

I took recourse in the way interviews are done abroad. Where the faculty and the student essentially chat. All my interactions were one-to-one. As I told the student about the work we were doing I was looking for responses. Is the student curious? Do they find a phenomenon interesting? How do they react to unusual data?

I interacted with 20 students in all. I found 2 who were very interesting and keen. It was a pleasure to interact with them. 2 were responsive but not curious. The rest were not curious.

All the students were asked to interact with my lab. The feedback I got back from my students was then matched with what I had observed in my interviews.

Unanimously we have narrowed down on one student. I do have back-up names but I know whom I want to have in my lab.

I have not yet announced my decision. Funnily none of the 4 students are toppers in any sense. They are good but they are not the kinds who have won awards. They have not even topped our merit list.  But as I said in the beginning, resumes in India are meaningless till we stop evaluating students based on what they have memorized.