The fact that the impact of these top collaborators is greater the earlier they occur in a researcher’s career (Qi et al., 2017; Li et al., 2019) means that when students are least knowledgeable about the world of scientific research is when their decisions may be of highest impact for their future careers as scientists. It should be noted that while the impact of collaborating with top scientists is significant, Qi et al. found that this relationship is not linear. There are diminishing returns to collaborating with an increasingly exceptional scientists, and this is an indication that an early researcher does not need to be extraordinarily selective and that likely any scientist in the top 10% of their field would be a valuable boost to an early researcher’s career.