NIH IRTA vs Research Assistant at Stanford

[PhysicianScientist]

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If a person has been accepted as an NIH IRTA and also as a "Research Assistant" at a lab at Stanford Medical School, would there be any advantage to picking one over the other based solely on the titles of the position (IRTA vs "Research Assistant")? Would medical schools look favorably on one over the other assuming that both research experiences are equally productive? Assume this person does not care about location of the research experience (east cost vs west coast)

 

[MaxPlancker]

no

 

[jeghaber]

Nope. Not at all.

The type of work you engage in will be more important (pipette monkey vs active member of team). This is hard to determine from job title alone as there are IRTAs doing nothing but pipetting and RAs in small labs submitting first author papers. Rather, this depends on your PI and lab environment (namely, is there a strict hierarchy or are non-students allowed/encouraged to come up with experiments or submit abstracts/papers?). If both seem equally conducive to productive work, just choose the lab that has the more interesting work or people.