Do I need a PI LOR? Unproductive Lab Experience

[ChillDawg]

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This is a repost from the official LOR thread but I didn't get a reply and that thread hasn't been getting much love.

Anyway, how important is it to get a letter from your PI?
I've done over a year's worth of research, presented at a research conference, and am writing a thesis, but haven't really produced anything meaningful in lab in terms of data (no pubs obviously)
My PI has an unofficial policy where he really only writes letters for undergrads who actually produce something and contribute data or figures for publications. I haven't had the opportunity as the projects I've been on have been stalled for reasons out of my control. I've heard horror stories about this PI not writing letters for undergrads when he said he would, and people have missed LOR deadlines because of this.

While I might continue volunteering in lab in the summer after I graduate in hopes of getting something produced and getting a letter, I almost want to just not ask him for a letter instead of designating the letter to schools and not have him actually send it or writing a lackluster letter.

(I recently talked to my PI and he basically confirmed that my LOR would be 'minimal' or that my contributions have been 'minimal' (its hard to understand him) - but he is open to having me work in the summer to advance the project and demonstrate my dedication)

I've learned a lot about research and can talk passionately about the project I've been working on and still plan to write about it in my experiences.

Please advise!

 

[PatrickStarMDPHD]

This is a repost from the official LOR thread but I didn't get a reply and that thread hasn't been getting much love.

Anyway, how important is it to get a letter from your PI?
I've done over a year's worth of research, presented at a research conference, and am writing a thesis, but haven't really produced anything meaningful in lab in terms of data (no pubs obviously)
My PI has an unofficial policy where he really only writes letters for undergrads who actually produce something and contribute data or figures for publications. I haven't had the opportunity as the projects I've been on have been stalled for reasons out of my control. I've heard horror stories about this PI not writing letters for undergrads when he said he would, and people have missed LOR deadlines because of this.

While I might continue volunteering in lab in the summer after I graduate in hopes of getting something produced and getting a letter, I almost want to just not ask him for a letter instead of designating the letter to schools and not have him actually send it or writing a lackluster letter.

(I recently talked to my PI and he basically confirmed that my LOR would be 'minimal' or that my contributions have been 'minimal' (its hard to understand him) - but he is open to having me work in the summer to advance the project and demonstrate my dedication)

I've learned a lot about research and can talk passionately about the project I've been working on and still plan to write about it in my experiences.

Please advise!

What's the situation with your other LORs? I am tempted to say to not ask him for a letter. He does not seem like the kind of person who would go to bat for you and write you an awesome letter for med school.

 

[intangible]

Have you been particularly notable as compared to your undergrad lab mates? If the PI is saying that your year's worth of research, research presentation and undergrad thesis is not at all within LOR-qualifying standards, you must not be doing something right.

I'd call it the PI's problem, but the PI can just let you go if they don't like you, and you don't shape up...so I defer to something wrong with you.

 

[NeuResurgens]

PI LOR's generally are not required. Schools tend to emphasize the letters from professors you took classes from.

 

[GrapesofRath]

You are applying this cycle correct?

In general if someone hesitates to write you a letter and when you ask the question puts in certain qualifiers like "it would be minimal(or whatever he was trying to say)" that's not a letter you want. At best it does little to nothing to help your application. At worst it says negative things and destroys your application single handedly.

You have to ask yourself if after a year you haven't produced anything to his satisfaction what reason do you have to think something is suddenly going to change this summer over the next 10 weeks? Maybe there is a legitimate reason---ie you are close to completing your project, but you have to stop and really think about that. If you are applying this cycle you don't have much time for him to re-evaluate you, is there a better use of the next few months for you?

As @gonnif said, there's no point speculating on who's fault it is here whether the PI is just overly stubborn about writing letters or god forbid just doesn't feel like writing one. I know of PI's who have hesitated to write letters for students who ended being IN papers of there's. Back when I was searching for labs a couple years ago and met with one potential PI he emphasized how he would only write a letter if he knew the student really well, regardless of their contributions to the lab even if their work was part of a publication. Maybe you made some mistakes or did something that didn't give him a great impression of you; it's all pointless speculation we don't know.

But anyway, at the very least I would be prepared to move on without a letter from him. I would imagine it's not the most ideal thing in the world but it's best to ask those involved in admissions if it really would be a significant detriment to do research and then not have a letter from a PI. Is this a more common thing than we think or do admissions people automatically get suspicious that something was seriously wrong? I have no idea.

 

[Goro]

It's hard enough for grad students and even post-docs to get papers out, so your situation is the norm, not the outlier.
You should only ask your PI for a LOR is you are confident that he will write you a good LOR.

This is a repost from the official LOR thread but I didn't get a reply and that thread hasn't been getting much love.

Anyway, how important is it to get a letter from your PI?
I've done over a year's worth of research, presented at a research conference, and am writing a thesis, but haven't really produced anything meaningful in lab in terms of data (no pubs obviously)
My PI has an unofficial policy where he really only writes letters for undergrads who actually produce something and contribute data or figures for publications. I haven't had the opportunity as the projects I've been on have been stalled for reasons out of my control. I've heard horror stories about this PI not writing letters for undergrads when he said he would, and people have missed LOR deadlines because of this.

While I might continue volunteering in lab in the summer after I graduate in hopes of getting something produced and getting a letter, I almost want to just not ask him for a letter instead of designating the letter to schools and not have him actually send it or writing a lackluster letter.

(I recently talked to my PI and he basically confirmed that my LOR would be 'minimal' or that my contributions have been 'minimal' (its hard to understand him) - but he is open to having me work in the summer to advance the project and demonstrate my dedication)

I've learned a lot about research and can talk passionately about the project I've been working on and still plan to write about it in my experiences.

Please advise!

 

[ChillDawg]

What's the situation with your other LORs? I am tempted to say to not ask him for a letter. He does not seem like the kind of person who would go to bat for you and write you an awesome letter for med school.

My other letters are quite good; I did a project for a law professor at the law school that involved designing a survey and doing some basic stats analysis on the data, so that might count as research experience.

Have you been particularly notable as compared to your undergrad lab mates? If the PI is saying that your year's worth of research, research presentation and undergrad thesis is not at all within LOR-qualifying standards, you must not be doing something right.

I'd call it the PI's problem, but the PI can just let you go if they don't like you, and you don't shape up...so I defer to something wrong with you.

I don't want to badmouth my PI, so I'll just say that he has a reputation for this among undergrads at my school. Other students kinda miserable and there's a very high turnover. (people 'warned' me of the lab later on, but I thought it would be too late to join another lab senior year)

But anyway, at the very least I would be prepared to move on without a letter from him. I would imagine it's not the most ideal thing in the world but it's best to ask those involved in admissions if it really would be a significant detriment to do research and then not have a letter from a PI. Is this a more common thing than we think or do admissions people automatically get suspicious that something was seriously wrong? I have no idea.

Yes, I'm very curious about this as well.

If I stay the summer, maybe we can adjust our protocol and tighten up our technique enough to produce our protein in significant quantities. That might be considered 'enough' for him.

Any adcoms want to weigh in? @LizzyM @gyngyn

 

[Lawpy]

PI LOR's generally are not required. Schools tend to emphasize the letters from professors you took classes from.

Usually, top schools, which are research-heavy, strongly recommend, if not require, a research LOR for obvious reasons. That said, not having a research LOR isn't a red flag, though it may raise a few eyebrows, especially if the research is considered a most significant activity.

It's hard enough for grad students and even post-docs to get papers out, so your situation is the norm, not the outlier.
You should only ask your PI for a LOR is you are confident that he will write you a good LOR.

Agreed. But given the context and OP's hesitance, it seems that the PI letter will be lukewarm at best and dangerous at worst.

 

[GrapesofRath]

I spent a bit of time looking into this in the past and just did again for the past 20 minutes. If you really are concerned @ChillDawg here is a direct quote from @Goro

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-it-bad-to-not-have-a-pi-letter.1110273/

Look at the thread and you'll see @Goro say it's not an issue. You can do some more anecdotal research on here if you want and find plenty of cases of people posting they got into med school fine without PI letters(even if they did significant research) and were never asked about it.

I don't want to make any definitive conclusions, I really haven't spent a ton of time looking into this, but it sounds like you'll be fine and you shouldn't really try and press and go out of your way to get this letter from a PI who clearly as already stated hesitations about writing one.

Now if we are talking about top schools, particularly those with major emphasis on research, this is probably a bigger issue. Harvard is famous for requiring letters from every PI you ever worked with. Apparently University of Utah requires a PI letter as well and from what it looked like there are top schools that recommend it which means it won't be great if you don't have one. But it doesn't sound like research is a huge part of your application and that you'll be gunning for Harvard so breathe easier.

 

[NeuResurgens]

Usually, top schools, which are research-heavy, strongly recommend, if not require, a research LOR for obvious reasons. That said, not having a research LOR isn't a red flag, though it may raise a few eyebrows, especially if the research is considered a most significant activity.

Interesting. I thought the only programs that actually implicitly required research LORs were MD/PhD.. Perhaps it's an unwritten thing for some of the top tier research-driven schools?

 

[intangible]

I don't want to badmouth my PI, so I'll just say that he has a reputation for this among undergrads at my school. Other students kinda miserable and there's a very high turnover. (people 'warned' me of the lab later on, but I thought it would be too late to join another lab senior year)

Okay, so you've willingly taken a huge risk in joining a lab run by a PI who happens to have a reputation for being particularly neglectful to his undergraduates. You've made the commitment and are confused about why you did not receive treatment that would not only be conditional, but also conditional in your favor.

If you are just joining a lab in your senior year to check off a box, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that the PI doesn't want to write you a letter after a bare-bones contribution to the lab. Dishwashing and autoclaving is not really substantial experience with a research lab—remember that PIs don't really have an inclination to train MD hopefuls, they want the future PhD candidates in their fields to train with them.

Examine your role from the PIs shoes and see how you measure up to (1) current undergraduates training under the same PI; and (2) undergraduate alumni having trained in that lab.

It shouldn't come as a surprise for you that even research takes research. You should always keep certain things in mind: how much time you have before graduating, prior experience, PIs training experience, reputation, etc. to gauge how comprehensive of a lab experience you'll have.

 

[GrapesofRath]

Okay, so you've willingly taken a huge risk in joining a lab run by a PI who happens to have a reputation for being particularly neglectful to his undergraduates. You've made the commitment and are confused about why you did not receive treatment that would not only be conditional, but also conditional in your favor.

If you are just joining a lab in your senior year to check off a box, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that the PI doesn't want to write you a letter after a bare-bones contribution to the lab. Dishwashing and autoclaving is not really substantial experience with a research lab—remember that PIs don't really have an inclination to train MD hopefuls, they want the future PhD candidates in their fields to train with them.

Examine your role from the PIs shoes and see how you measure up to (1) current undergraduates training under the same PI; and (2) undergraduate alumni having trained in that lab.

It shouldn't come as a surprise for you that even research takes research. You should always keep certain things in mind: how much time you have before graduating, prior experience, PIs training experience, reputation, etc. to gauge how comprehensive of a lab experience you'll have.

Talk about jumping to conclusions the OP said they had presented at a conference before and are preparing a thesis; doesn't sound like just autoclaving and dishwashing to me. Also plenty of pre meds join labs and state their intentions without annoying their PIs because they aren't pursuing PhDs

Look there are plenty of PIs where this would be more than enough to warrant a letter. As @gonnif stated plenty of faculty have all kinds of hesitations about writing letters fair or not. Every PI has different standards for what constitutes a rec letter. It's possible the OP did something that put them in unfavorable terms with the PI. It's also possible the PI is just very strict and rigid about writing letters. We don't know

 

[kthxbai]

I'm with @Goro on this. Don't risk a mediocre letter (or no letter at all) based on what you think you should do. Get awesome letters from people who know you well and leave the lab experience for the AMCAS activities portion. I'm going out on a limb here, but I think adcoms won't mind that you don't have a letter from your PI as long as the other ones are strong and diverse.

 

[mimelim]

At a research oriented medical school, it will be a negative to not have a letter from a PI that you worked with for over a year. There will be someone on the committee that will notice and wonder why it is missing. Will it sink you? Probably not, it is just a small negative in a sea of other variables. But, if you are putting down that you invested a year or more into something or if research is mentioned in your personal statement or is a focal point of your application, not having a letter from a PI is a negative.

But.... And this is a big one... A bad letter is FAR more negative and can kill and application.

 

[northernlights15]

At a research oriented medical school, it will be a negative to not have a letter from a PI that you worked with for over a year. There will be someone on the committee that will notice and wonder why it is missing. Will it sink you? Probably not, it is just a small negative in a sea of other variables. But, if you are putting down that you invested a year or more into something or if research is mentioned in your personal statement or is a focal point of your application, not having a letter from a PI is a negative.

But.... And this is a big one... A bad letter is FAR more negative and can kill and application.

Slightly off topic, but would you say it's a must to also have letters from club advisors if you held a leadership role in that club? Or a volunteer coordinator if you volunteered there for 1+ years?

 

[mimelim]

Slightly off topic, but would you say it's a must to also have letters from club advisors if you held a leadership role in that club? Or a volunteer coordinator if you volunteered there for 1+ years?

No. My comments are specific to research oriented schools and research PIs. I would hope that any commitment of >year will be productive and will garner people that will speak highly of you, but certainly nobody will go looking for those letters. This is in contrast to research where some research oriented adcoms will look for it.

 

[GrapesofRath]

At a research oriented medical school, it will be a negative to not have a letter from a PI that you worked with for over a year. There will be someone on the committee that will notice and wonder why it is missing. Will it sink you? Probably not, it is just a small negative in a sea of other variables. But, if you are putting down that you invested a year or more into something or if research is mentioned in your personal statement or is a focal point of your application, not having a letter from a PI is a negative.

But.... And this is a big one... A bad letter is FAR more negative and can kill and application.

All of this is true but the key thing here is heavily research oriented. Is this something penn or Johns Hopkins would notice? Sure. But when we are talking about schools that don't fit under this kind of research oriented category it is a different discussion to some extent.

The other thing like others have said here is what the rest of your app is like. If you have 3 glowing letters and have bigger commitments than research on your app? Then It could easily generate less focus and significance than someone who is relying on research as a big of their app.

Like you said also there is NOTHING that ever justifies going to someone to get a letter you know won't be good. There's no coming back from a bad letter

 

[intangible]

Talk about jumping to conclusions the OP said they had presented at a conference before and are preparing a thesis; doesn't sound like just autoclaving and dishwashing to me. Also plenty of pre meds join labs and state their intentions without annoying their PIs because they aren't pursuing PhDs

Look there are plenty of PIs where this would be more than enough to warrant a letter. As @gonnif stated plenty of faculty have all kinds of hesitations about writing letters fair or not. Every PI has different standards for what constitutes a rec letter. It's possible the OP did something that put them in unfavorable terms with the PI. It's also possible the PI is just very strict and rigid about writing letters. We don't know

Under any other circumstances, I would completely agree with you.

However, it was the OP's decision to join a lab, completely conscious of the fact that the PI is a known 569.42.

Even if you aren't pursuing a PhD, you should be expected to collaborate with your lab as if pursuing a PhD is your sole purpose in life. I don't see why "I'm a pre-med" is code for half-assing in the lab. Commit, or don't: don't be somewhere in the middle.

My PI is incredibly gracious, but she has very little patience for undergrads who want to be MD students and try to slide by the skin of their teeth. A single presentation and UG thesis aren't exactly what I would consider a stellar accomplishment, unless the work behind the thesis was original and conducted in the lab under their supervision, too (based on my school's UG thesis requirements).

 

[GrapesofRath]

Under any other circumstances, I would completely agree with you.

However, it was the OP's decision to join a lab, completely conscious of the fact that the PI is a known 569.42.

Even if you aren't pursuing a PhD, you should be expected to collaborate with your lab as if pursuing a PhD is your sole purpose in life. I don't see why "I'm a pre-med" is code for half-assing in the lab. Commit, or don't: don't be somewhere in the middle.

My PI is incredibly gracious, but she has very little patience for undergrads who want to be MD students and try to slide by the skin of their teeth. A single presentation and UG thesis aren't exactly what I would consider a stellar accomplishment, unless the work behind the thesis was original and conducted in the lab under their supervision, too (based on my school's UG thesis requirements).

Every lab and every situation is different. My PI definitely does not have the expectation that I should "act as if pursuing a PhD is the sole purpose of my life" and I can say that none of my friends have ever talked anything near about having that kind of commitment to a lab in their situations either. Also it's easy to fault the OP for joining a lab with a reputation of being tough and a PI that had a reputation for being a hardass. In hindsight, I would never again join a lab like that after working with someone kind of similar to this my freshmen year. But that's hindsight and from directly learning from a mediocre experience. For my first lab experience back as a freshmen a) I would have just wanted to get in research and not worried too much about the PI b) and far more importantly I would have no idea what makes a PI worth working for and what is one you should be cautious of. I could have easily fallen for a very nice PI who would have just given me grunt work and no real project. I could have easily been turned off by a PI that didn't seem particularly outgoing and personable but who would have put me on some really good projects right away with high chances of publishing in high quality journals. That's part of the undergrad experience--learning those who to make contacts and work with and those who aren't worth the effort and what a good opportunity is. Blaming this whole experience because the OP didnt know how to heed caution to the idea that this PI might be a hardass or have any idea how much of a hardass he might be is unrealistic at best.

Again, we're just making generalizations here lumping all labs having the same standards as what a student should do to deserve a rec letter. There absolutely are lots of PIs who will write letters to students who have made minimal contributions to the lab in terms of data(I probably could get a letter from my first lab as a freshmen for doing nothing if I asked. It just wouldn't help me and I know others who have in similar situations). There are labs where I know people who struggled getting letters from their PI even after being in a paper( I once had a friend who was in two papers and his PI REVOKED the letter she sent because he ended up applying to some schools he didn't initally let her know about and asked her if he could send it out to them. She personally contacted every school to revoke it. How's that for a nightmare). It varies tremendously. Presenting at a research conference and writing a thesis on your research would be enough for many PIs to write letters for their students. It's not for this PI. Whether that is because the OP did some things they shouldn't have done to strain the relationship with the PI to some extent or the PI is just very rigid and stubborn about writing letters, we really don't know.

 

[skougess]

You guys are intense. I told my PI straight up that I would be applying to med school when I joined. It has been a wonderful experience and he has happily agreed to write me a LOR.

With that said it sounds like it's a risk to get a LOR from your PI. I wouldn't do it.

 

[vellez]

All of my letter writers were really happy to write them for me. If your letter writer doesn't seem happy to do it, or tells you to "write your own letter, and I will sign it", ask someone else. Being asked to write a letter is somewhat of an honor (or at least a compliment) to many profs, and many will be really happy to help you out, especially if they liked or respected you.

 

[ChillDawg]

Thanks for all the advice, guys.
@intangible, you are being incredibly presumptuous.
I wasn't warned about the PI until after I had joined and talked to people who quit the lab. And I didn't join senior year (joined junior year), nor did I join to just check off a box. You seem to be frustrated with pre-medical research assistants and are misdirecting that at me...
I've put in many hours, but the project kept getting stalled for reasons beyond my control, as I've mentioned earlier, and have not strained relations with my PI; all the long-timers in lab say that he only writes letters for people who produce something substantial, regardless of how well he gets along with them.
For the record, I compare quite favorably with the few remaining UG in lab at least in terms of literature review presentations and understanding the theoretical concepts of the project.

I have a lot of good letters otherwise, so I'll most likely avoid asking my PI for a LOR bar some results produced in my last few weeks in lab.

My other question now would be, do I list lab as one of the 3 significant experiences? I had originally planned to, and have much to say, but I don't want to draw any further attention the my lack of PI letter...

 

[GrapesofRath]

Thanks for all the advice, guys.
@intangible, you are being incredibly presumptuous.
I wasn't warned about the PI until after I had joined and talked to people who quit the lab. And I didn't join senior year (joined junior year), nor did I join to just check off a box. You seem to be frustrated with pre-medical research assistants and are misdirecting that at me...
I've put in many hours, but the project kept getting stalled for reasons beyond my control, as I've mentioned earlier, and have not strained relations with my PI; all the long-timers in lab say that he only writes letters for people who produce something substantial, regardless of how well he gets along with them.
For the record, I compare quite favorably with the few remaining UG in lab at least in terms of literature review presentations and understanding the theoretical concepts of the project.

I have a lot of good letters otherwise, so I'll most likely avoid asking my PI for a LOR bar some results produced in my last few weeks in lab.

My other question now would be, do I list lab as one of the 3 significant experiences? I had originally planned to, and have much to say, but I don't want to draw any further attention the my lack of PI letter...

As @mimelim was saying say schools with significant research focus is where this matters. So ask yourself where are you applying-----if its schools like Johns Hopkins and WASHU then yeah you would draw further attention to your lack of letter by doing that. If its schools that don't have a strong focus to research you are fine and go ahead and list this in your top 3. It's all relative.

 

[intangible]

Thanks for all the advice, guys.
@intangible, you are being incredibly presumptuous.
I wasn't warned about the PI until after I had joined and talked to people who quit the lab. And I didn't join senior year (joined junior year), nor did I join to just check off a box. You seem to be frustrated with pre-medical research assistants and are misdirecting that at me...
I've put in many hours, but the project kept getting stalled for reasons beyond my control, as I've mentioned earlier, and have not strained relations with my PI; all the long-timers in lab say that he only writes letters for people who produce something substantial, regardless of how well he gets along with them.
For the record, I compare quite favorably with the few remaining UG in lab at least in terms of literature review presentations and understanding the theoretical concepts of the project.

I have a lot of good letters otherwise, so I'll most likely avoid asking my PI for a LOR bar some results produced in my last few weeks in lab.

My other question now would be, do I list lab as one of the 3 significant experiences? I had originally planned to, and have much to say, but I don't want to draw any further attention the my lack of PI letter...

Can you blame me? In a subculture where all that matters is getting in, it's easy to become cynical about what your intentions are. It's kind of difficult to see a student in a positive light when the situation does not at all call for a positive perspective.

There is a growing disconnect between your work in the lab and what your PI considers substantial. Why is that? You mentioned your project was stalled, but you've worked a very short time (in terms of research). Were you able to publish any data at all?