I have two professors in the same university expecting me to do my PhD with them

Seeking advice-academic

I did my bachelor's, master's, and have just started my PhD, all in the same university.

During my undergrad, there was this one professor that noticed that I had potential and kept encouraging me to apply for a PhD and work with him (my university has both options: bachelor's to PhD, or bachelor's then master's then PhD). I didn't like the bachelor's to PhD program so I opted to do a master's first. He seemed to not like or approve my decision but still supported me by writing an excellent recommendation letter.

During my first semester of the master's, I sat in on one of his PhD courses, and he mentioned more than once that "if you came back and did your PhD with me, you would work on something related to this", so I took that as a hint that he's not interested in supervising my master's. Let's call this professor A, he is an old guy with a good reputation in the area and a lot of experience.

When it came time to chose my master's thesis, I didn't like any of the proposed topics (my department sends out a list of projects and we pick one) and approached prof. B to work with him. Prof. B's work is very far from prof A's work, it was related to a course I took with him towards the end of my bachelor's and absolutely loved it. But prof. B warned me about going into his field as it's not in demand in our region, and later informed me that he will soon leave the university and won't be there to supervise my PhD if I was planning on doing that.

When prof. B told me that, I was taking a course with prof. C, who always seemed to be a very nice person who would go above and beyond to help students, so I wrote him an email saying that this is my situation with prof. B, I'm second guessing if I should do my master's with him or change to something that I can do for both master's and PhD, and asked him about his field.

We met after class and he gave me genuine advice about what will happen if I decide to change or not, then told me about his field and proposed a project that I can do for a master's with him then continue on it for the PhD, so I changed and did my master's with prof. C. It was overall a good experience and the prof went above and beyond to support me during my PhD application process. 

Now the problem is that just now I realised that prof. A, who I admire and respect a lot, dislikes me for no longer wanting to do my PhD with him. Soon they will send out the proposed projects for the PhD and I'd have to pick my top 3 choices and a committee from my department will match students to projects.

Both prof. A and prof. C have very interesting projects, and both are good supervisors in very different ways.

Should I

a) ignore everything and continue with prof. C

b) once the projects are here, go to prof. A asking about his project and indicate that it will be one of my options along with what prof. C is offering

c) go to prof. C for advice

Prof. C is not as old or experienced as prof. A, he is currently supervising his first batch of PhD students and I was his first master's student, but he is the best for advice in both personal and professional aspects. While prof. A is very experienced, had a ton of PhD students in several countries, the ones who graduated from my university had a good experience.

Posted Sep 5, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

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