Research & Graduate School..
- Thread starter theriomorphos
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I'm not entirely sure why you are asking here about grad school. This is a forum for older students trying to get into med school, which is a totally different process.
To answer your questions, though: I will assume that you are asking about a science PhD. If you are going for a master's degree then you can ignore a lot of this. Master's programs are much easier to get into, and much easier to complete. Universities love master's students because the students usually pay rather than being paid.
Getting into a good PhD program has very, very little to do with where you went for undergrad. I'm currently at one of the top neuroscience programs in the country and virtually all of the grad students here come from schools that I had never even heard of before. Most programs want to see these things:
1. Most importantly, you have to demonstrate a love of research. It doesn't matter whether it was a well-known researcher's lab, but you have to find some way to prove that research is a priority in your life. Research while you are in undergrad, during summers, after undergrad. Grad school for science is a soul-sucking five or six years of your life and they want to know that you will not quit when it gets tough (because it will). If someone has a burning desire for research then that can outweigh almost anything else in an application.
2. You have to balance your classwork and your research as an undergrad. You don't need a 4.0 for grad school, but you should aim for a 3.5 or higher. You can get in with less though, and sometimes considerably less.
3. The GRE test is very important to most grad schools. Fortunately, it is also much simpler than the MCAT that premed students take. If you are going into a quantitative lab (which seems to be the case from the places that you linked) then you should aim for a perfect score on the math subsection. Plenty of students are able to do that. Be one of them.
4. You must be a good "fit" for the program. While technically grad schools are training you, in reality you are becoming a cog in the wheel of a running research lab. For that reason, at many universities there is an expectation that you will have made contact with a single professor who you want to work with before applying to the PhD program. If you do not fit personality-wise with the rest of the professor's lab then the best GPA, LORs, or whatever won't save your application.
Most labs welcome interested undergrad students who want to try out research, provided that (a) you are honestly interested in their research and not just looking for a big-name famous researcher to write you a rec letter and (b) it is worth their while to train you in terms of time and money. High GPA, LORs, and prior research experience are not actually requirements in most cases for undergrad students (although you could get unlucky). You should understand that unless you are an undergrad at that university, the professors that run the lab are under zero obligation to teach you. Their careers depend on their lab producing high quality research. If you need to be trained, one of their grad students or postdocs will have to do that, and that means less productivity from that grad student or postdoc. Most labs also struggle for funding, so if you expect to be paid then you may have to look a long time to find a lab willing to take you on.
So the tl;dr version: Don't stress about school reputation. Find research that you like. Work hard. Don't be a jerk.
To answer your questions, though: I will assume that you are asking about a science PhD. If you are going for a master's degree then you can ignore a lot of this. Master's programs are much easier to get into, and much easier to complete. Universities love master's students because the students usually pay rather than being paid.
Getting into a good PhD program has very, very little to do with where you went for undergrad. I'm currently at one of the top neuroscience programs in the country and virtually all of the grad students here come from schools that I had never even heard of before. Most programs want to see these things:
1. Most importantly, you have to demonstrate a love of research. It doesn't matter whether it was a well-known researcher's lab, but you have to find some way to prove that research is a priority in your life. Research while you are in undergrad, during summers, after undergrad. Grad school for science is a soul-sucking five or six years of your life and they want to know that you will not quit when it gets tough (because it will). If someone has a burning desire for research then that can outweigh almost anything else in an application.
2. You have to balance your classwork and your research as an undergrad. You don't need a 4.0 for grad school, but you should aim for a 3.5 or higher. You can get in with less though, and sometimes considerably less.
3. The GRE test is very important to most grad schools. Fortunately, it is also much simpler than the MCAT that premed students take. If you are going into a quantitative lab (which seems to be the case from the places that you linked) then you should aim for a perfect score on the math subsection. Plenty of students are able to do that. Be one of them.
4. You must be a good "fit" for the program. While technically grad schools are training you, in reality you are becoming a cog in the wheel of a running research lab. For that reason, at many universities there is an expectation that you will have made contact with a single professor who you want to work with before applying to the PhD program. If you do not fit personality-wise with the rest of the professor's lab then the best GPA, LORs, or whatever won't save your application.
Most labs welcome interested undergrad students who want to try out research, provided that (a) you are honestly interested in their research and not just looking for a big-name famous researcher to write you a rec letter and (b) it is worth their while to train you in terms of time and money. High GPA, LORs, and prior research experience are not actually requirements in most cases for undergrad students (although you could get unlucky). You should understand that unless you are an undergrad at that university, the professors that run the lab are under zero obligation to teach you. Their careers depend on their lab producing high quality research. If you need to be trained, one of their grad students or postdocs will have to do that, and that means less productivity from that grad student or postdoc. Most labs also struggle for funding, so if you expect to be paid then you may have to look a long time to find a lab willing to take you on.
So the tl;dr version: Don't stress about school reputation. Find research that you like. Work hard. Don't be a jerk.
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I think the answer to that depends entirely on the individual researchers. It has to be worth it to them to spend the time to train you. My undergrad degree was in computer science, with nearly no biology, but I was welcomed into a neuroscience lab. I happened to have a skill that the lab needed (software development) and they were willing to let me quickly play catch-up on the missing bio knowledge. I could see a math major doing research in biophysics, sure. You might have to ask around at several labs before you find one willing to give you a chance. Be humble, willing to start with the mundane tasks in the lab, and willing to read up on all the knowledge that you are missing by not having majored in that field. If you are dependable and pleasant to be around then you will find plenty of opportunity to do fun things, eventually.
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