Each year at University of Toronto we need to submit an activity report used for determining raises. It includes publications, teaching and graduate supervision. As with any accomplishment based tracking, this doesn't give a full picture of activity as it downplays failures1 and rewards inflation of accomplishments.
I've been at University of Toronto eight years now, having received tenure in 2022. For my own introspectioncough, procranstination, I decided to attempt an honest accounting of my graduate student supervision: including students that left the program they entered into. Every student is unique and it would be inappropriate to go into detail about invidual situtations. Nevertheless, I found it valueable to reflect on the students trajectories from a somewhat bird's eye view.
I've only included MSc and PhD students (i.e., no undergrads or professional masters students). Each line is a student sorted left to right by start year and colored by the program they entered into. A circle means they graduated (color of which indicating which program). A square means they left the program/my supervision.
At University of Toronto we have a thesis-based MSc program (essentially restricted to domestic students) that is typically (though not always) assumed to be an on ramp into the PhD. As my visualization shows, I've graduated a number of MSc students that did not go on to do a PhD with me.
It is impossible for me to untangle individuals from this plot when I look at it, but perhaps it's useful for others who are bit more removed to a see a more complete accounting of what 8 years of supervision can look like.
1 Jia-Bin Huang has published a CV failures.