jim pfaendtner
The PRG blog is here to share our experiences and stories. Everyone in my group is invited to contribute posts and the hope is that we will have 3-4 posts per year.
It is time for graduate students to select research groups, and I decided to write the 1st post on my advice for finding a group. Choosing a research group is hard.
If you are a PhD student, this is the last time you will effectively get to pick your own boss, choose wisely. Every PhD student needs to consider their own personal mix of “advisor” vs “research area” vs “group culture”. When I was graduate program director, and a student would come to me with issues, the first three questions I would ask are “what is your relationship like with your advisor?” , “tell me about how your research is going?” and “how do you get along with your group?” Why? Because in grad school, all three are rarely functioning at a high level, but if you don’t have at least one leg to lean on, you are in trouble. All three matter, but their weights are different for each of you. Figure it out before you make your final decision and make sure you have a fighting chance of having your needs met when grad school gets tough (it will).
The choice for MS students is a little different. You are likely investing a lot of your resource to pursue a graduate degree. Good for you, and I hope it makes a positive impact in your career. You should look very hard at your potential advisor’s ability to help you reach your near term goals. Do you want to move on to a PhD program? Get an internship or job? Share your goals with your advisor and ask them how they have helped previous students and try and learn about how they will help you. You deserve it! We post all of our graduate alumni outcomes on our members page so that you can have a good understanding of where people go when they leave our group.
Undergraduate research is a hugely different experience for each person. I mostly washed glassware and did sample prep for 3 years, and that was good enough to get me into grad school (thankfully). In contrast, I’ve had undergraduates publish 1st author research manuscripts. The hard reality is that there are usually more interested people than opportunities. This is even more true in the pandemic when there are capacity limitations in wet labs. You should carefully research different labs and be ready to explain why you want to join that particular lab. Prospective UG researchers in my lab need to attend two rounds of our subgroup meetings to learn about projects, meet people in the lab, and identify if the problems that we are excited about are also exciting to you. You should do reading outside of these meetings, ask for papers and materials to prepare, nothing makes us happier than when prospective group members are engaged and showing genuine interest.