Research questions during interview

[Ziggy08]

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Hi,

How detailed do MSTP interviewers ask you about your research? Obviously, it's important to know and be able to talk about your research, but I'm not sure I remember every single detail of something I did 3 years ago...

 

[j-weezy]

I'd say anything you wrote about is fair game.

 

[pennquaker08]

Not only everything you wrote about, but also everything that anybody in your lab who did anything relating to or leading up to what you did is fair game. Also it's good to know a lot about your subject in general. I was asked questions that pertained both to elements upstream and downstream from my actual focus.

 

[Picklesali]

Not only everything you wrote about, but also everything that anybody in your lab who did anything relating to or leading up to what you did is fair game. Also it's good to know a lot about your subject in general. I was asked questions that pertained both to elements upstream and downstream from my actual focus.

Was this your NYU interview? If you don't mind - I was wondering if you might let me know sort of what your research focus is, and what these upstream and downstream questions were... I feel that the scope could really be dependent on what field you are in.
For instance, my work is focused on characterizing one protein. My lab's overall goal is looking at a complex of proteins. The field's goal is to look at every protein ever, and put the puzzle together. I certainly hope they don't ask about the third category, because I have a hard time keeping what methylation mark initiates which transcription factor to blah blah...

 

[Sinfekl]

Not only everything you wrote about, but also everything that anybody in your lab who did anything relating to or leading up to what you did is fair game. Also it's good to know a lot about your subject in general. I was asked questions that pertained both to elements upstream and downstream from my actual focus.

I think that's a bit of an exageration. While they may ask about previous and future research, you can be much more general with your answer. They're just trying to see how you think on your feet, and if you can move a little out of your comfort zone while still bringing in your knowledge base. I don't think its quite as bad as your post makes it seem.

I think your best bet is to re-read all your research essays and, sentence by sentence, make sure you can defend/elaborate on each one, even if they're relatively unimportant.

 

[pennquaker08]

Yes, this was NYU. I don't want really want to post too much specifically on the interviews until I get my decision.

Let me just say, the difficulty of the interviews naturally varies by interviewer. One of my interviewers basically chatted about their own research most of the time, while one didn't mention any of theirs--focusing solely on me the whole time--and even got to the point of asking me how a colleague of mine performed a very specific and detailed procedure before I even arrived in the lab and that was only peripherally related to my own project. This interviewer seemed to me to want to see how I responded to the challenging nature of the questions just as much as what the actual answers were. So, definitely be alert and up for most anything!

And maybe one can be more general with their answers elsewhere, but in the case of my interviews at NYU, the inability to offer such specificity would have been telling. Believe me, when I tried to give a generalized answer for various questions, my interviewers continued to probe deeper.

 

[SpeakLittleB]

imo you just need to convey that you truly understand what you are doing... specifics are important but not specifics like "how do you run a gel" but more like what controls did you do and why... it makes absolute sense to ask about previous work leading up to your current project because if you can answer that, it means you understand what you are doing!

for when you are stumped, i recommend something like "I know X and Y are related to what you're asking, but I am not sure that Z has been determined" or "that is a great question that I planned to test by method X"... so it's perfectly fine to not know everything, but making clear points that you do know about shows the depth of what you do understand. if you've been to research conferences, you probably know how much of the answers given by presenters are of the type I just mentioned anyway..

these might be wasted words, but: just enjoy yourself at the interviews..

 

[xanthines]

Spot on! I give you 5 thumbs up! 😉

👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍

-X

imo you just need to convey that you truly understand what you are doing... specifics are important but not specifics like "how do you run a gel" but more like what controls did you do and why... it makes absolute sense to ask about previous work leading up to your current project because if you can answer that, it means you understand what you are doing!

for when you are stumped, i recommend something like "I know X and Y are related to what you're asking, but I am not sure that Z has been determined" or "that is a great question that I planned to test by method X"... so it's perfectly fine to not know everything, but making clear points that you do know about shows the depth of what you do understand. if you've been to research conferences, you probably know how much of the answers given by presenters are of the type I just mentioned anyway..

these might be wasted words, but: just enjoy yourself at the interviews..

 

[Hurricane]

I think that's a bit of an exageration. While they may ask about previous and future research, you can be much more general with your answer. They're just trying to see how you think on your feet, and if you can move a little out of your comfort zone while still bringing in your knowledge base. I don't think its quite as bad as your post makes it seem.

I think your best bet is to re-read all your research essays and, sentence by sentence, make sure you can defend/elaborate on each one, even if they're relatively unimportant.

Agree with above. I did some interviews at my program, and our goal was to make sure you had some real research experience, and that you understood the science behind the stuff you were doing and weren't just washing dishes or doing data entry.