Science Grad School - Importance of Research?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know this is getting a bit esoteric (even for around here) but I’ve been going through the whole motions of thinking about/looking at/applying to grad schools this summer, and this question has been nagging me for a while.

You see, when I was an undergrad, I didn’t get any research experience. I want to go to grad school in a PhD program for chemistry (organic or materials… better yet, organic polymers!) and this is the only thing of mine that I think might stand out as saying “hey, he’s not prepared” or some such. I’ve asked my advisors and other professors and got a few different responses, but I’m just curious to see what you all think about the importance of undergraduate research in getting in to (competitive) graduate programs.

2

When I went to the US for graduate school in Chemistry, there was no research requirement. I actually had done some research (my undergrad did require it), most of the students who joined with me hadn’t done any.

If you’re American, that can give you a distinct advantage: many schools give preference to US students. The one where I went had a 25% quota for Americans which never got filled; in the 3 years I was there, only an American applied. When there weren’t enough American applications to fill in the quota, those spots could go to foreign students - but any American had an enormous advantage.

My suggestion is doing some research to find out which specific schools are of interest to you and checking out whether they do have research requirements.

3

From what I’ve gathered, most schools don’t really have a requirement, but it is listed as something that’s preferable (obviously). What I’m wondering is whether this is a “we let someone in last year who hadn’t done any, so technically it’s not a requirement” type thing or whether a significant portion of people that come in each year haven’t done any.

I am American (as my friend says, I’m an American, not an American’t) - I didn’t know that American grad schools had quotas for us Yanks. Are there really that few Americans who want to go that they need that sort of thing?

4

In Chemistry? I don’t know what the current numbers are, but yeah, it used to be pretty ridiculous. Check out the latest education report in C&EN for current numbers.

It also used to be one of the few fields where you could live on a TA’s salary (mind you, better go to Austin or Miami than Boston, since the salary was the same everywhere but housing was much more expensive in Boston). I went to U of Miami from 1994 to 1997, shared housing within walking distance of campus, didn’t have a car and managed to fly home once a year and put money away.

5

Oh, and there was somewhat of an employment slump for chemists at the time (4% unemployment! The horror!). It didn’t seem to make a difference on how many Americans were applying for graduate school in chemistry. People rush to MBAs but not so much to places where you must wear a coat over head-to-toe clothing.

6
  • Genuine* undergraduate research doesn’t seem to be particularly common in U.S. schools in my perhaps limited experience . Usually it seems more like something an exceptional student has to seek out, rather than a matter of course. If you really feel uncomfortable diving straight into the deep end, there is always the middle road - going into a Masters program first.

While some advisers I’ve talked to would dismiss that as “hand-holding”, it’s actually a pretty common progression in U.S. universities - Baccalaureate>Masters>Doctorate>occasionally Post-Doctorate. It also has the added benefit of potentially increasing your publication output before going on the job market and if you burn out mid-way through the plan, a Masters is a much stronger fallback than a Bachelors.

The drawback of course is that you adding a minimum of two, more likely 3-4 years to your educational slog.

7

I had never touched a pipette when I started graduate school. It was something of a hindrance early on because I felt like I was behind the other students, which I was. But, if your grades and test scores are good, and you have a good story to answer the question of why you think you’d be good at science (and love it) without any experience you should be all right.

One aside, don’t believe the hype regarding unemployment numbers for scientists. It’s true that we’re rarely unemployed, but underemployment is pretty much the norm (postdocs…).

Not as bad in chemistry as some other fields but definitely something to consider. Most of the people I went to grad school with are either still postdocs earning 37K per year, or left science altogether.

8

(Just so you know, my experience is in physics, so not quite your situation.)

I must admit that, while I don’t know of any schools (including top-tier ones) that required research experience when I applied (10 years ago), it really helps quite a bit for several reasons. First, obviously, it shows that you have thought about research some (and since research is what you do in grad school…), and for that reason alone will promote a candidate who has done research over one who hasn’t. Less obviously, it gives you something to write your statement of purpose about (it’s a little hard to talk about what your research interests are if you’ve never done any) and a professor who presumably knows you well enough to write you a good recommendation.

However, all these can be overcome. If you have really good professor recommendations (especially for lab classes), grades, and test scores, in that order, schools will be forgiving of a lack of research. Doing a fair bit of reading around on your own, coupled with talking with grad students/profs, will allow you to write a decent statement of purpose (and, random advice: I cannot stress enough that you need a grad student, at least, to read and critique this!).

I will also say that it depends quite a bit on the field you are interested in. If it’s a very lab-intensive field, they might look a bit more askance in your not having any experience (“how does this Xylophone know that s/he wants to do research?”) but if you are more interested in theoretical/computational chemistry (for which, presumably, you need a whole crapload of grad-level classes before you can even start doing research anyway) it is much less important. (or, at least, so I’m extrapolating from theoretical/experimental physics)

What did you do during your summers during college? This may also play a role. If you were busy working so that you could eat, that’s one thing. If you were sunning on the beach, grad schools are not going to be quite as forgiving of your not doing some sort of research program during that time.

Can you get a lab job this summer? Even a menial lab job will give you an in where you can write about the research that lab does.

9

In my experience (engineering, not science, but likely close enough), research experience is preferred, but hardly expected. In other words, if you have it, you’ll stand out (particularly coupled with a good reference from the faculty member you worked for), but most students don’t have research experience.

As a general comment (not directed toward the OP), if you’re a science or engineering student planning on going to grad school, taking a semester of “undergraduate research” and working your butt off is probably the single most effective way of strengthening your grad school application. Well, other than “getting a four-point” or “smoking the GRE,” but those might not be options for everyone.

10

Another caveat I should have added to that last post: I was at a Top 5 grad school, so probably more of my peers had research experience (almost all the experimentalists, maybe half the foreign theorists, some smaller fraction of the American theorists) than at a competitive but non-top-5 school.

11

Well, I have an internship at an environmental engineering company this summer but it’s not exactly lab work - it’s more reviewing technical documents and giving chemistry-related advice to the managers and stuff like that. So not exactly original research or anything, but it’s not hanging out on the beach. I’m working for the next year TAing (kind of - I went to a tiny liberal arts school, and each year the chem dept hires on a graduating senior to help supervise labs, grade, that sort of thing) so that’s a good resume builder I hope, plus I get more rapport with my professors which can’t be a bad thing since they like me (I think) to begin with.

Anyway, we had a requirement to give a seminar as seniors - just a half hour talk, usually on whatever research you’d done, but you could do a lit review too - which I did, seeing as how I had no research under my belt. I did it on a fairly specific topic (polypyrrole synthesis and applications, if anyone’s interested) so that might help out in my statement of purpose, yes?

12

What was your undergraduate major and for what did you go to grad school, if I may ask?

13

That’s what I’m afraid of - that I’ll end up bombing the GRE and get passed over for someone with research experience.

Although I guess I could play hypotheticals all day with what might happen…
By the way, thanks to everyone responding - help from someone who’s been there is always valuable.

14

Thirdly, if you’ve spent time in a lab, you have some idea regarding what you’re signing up for, and you’re much less likely to walk after a year because grad school is nothing like what you thought it would be. You still have time to volunteer in a lab, which would go a long way towards addressing this concern.

15

Yeah, that sounds good. Actually, I’m told that to a certain subset of people it actually helps to have been out in the “real world” – I would think it would make you stand out a bit from the crowd, in any case. I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you; it sounds like you have things well in hand. Plus since you are at a small liberal arts school and not a large research institution (where research opportunities are a little more thick on the ground) that should be taken into account as well.

As long as you don’t do what a guy I know did: put down on his statement of purpose, when he should’ve been talking about all the cool things he was interested in relevant to quantum information theory, that he was interested “in industry.” :rolleyes:

(The physics GREs were almost completely ignored when I applied, unless you did extremely well, like, perfect, or extremely badly, like, didn’t answer any of the questions. Don’t know how this relates to chemistry, though.)

16

  1. I’d talk to professors in your field before considering a Masters. In many fields, a Masters is still the consolation degree that they give you when it’s clear that you’re not going to finish the PhD program you’re in. Or they’re for industry types who are too lightweight anyway for PhDs.

  2. If your goal is to be a professor, before you even consider applying to grad school, do the math: take a typical university and find out how many PhD students they accept each year in a given department. Then find out how many actual professors the department has, and estimate how long each professor’s career is before retiring. That will give you the average number of professorship openings each year in that program (hint, less than one, most likely). Calculate the ratio of new PhD’s each year to the number of professorship openings. Ask yourself if those are odds you really want to play. Seriously, the biggest pyramid scheme in the world today is PhD-track grad school.
    Now, if you’re in a field where industry is grabbing every PhD they can, and you can live with a career outside of academia, then obviously no worries, mate.

17

Hey, you know, I hear those quantum computers can transport people back in time now!

That’s a book? By Michael Crichton? Damn…

18

Well, but:

  1. An undergraduate with TA experience is probably rarer than an undergraduate with research experience. It’s maybe not as core a skill–you can get a PhD without teaching, but you can’t get one without doing research–but having experience supervising a lab is a big plus.
  2. Look, to be mercenary about it: what you’re shooting for is a great reference letter from a faculty member (or two), one that emphasizes what a great grad student you’ll be. The rapport is likely to be worth more than the experience, at least for the short-term goal of applying to grad school.
  3. “Undergraduate research” is kind of an oxymoron. It would be rare, I would think, for an undergraduate to do self-directed, original research. “Undergraduate research” means “run the experiment the way the faculty member tells you, don’t fuck it up, and be smart enough to note anything unusual.” Or maybe “read a bunch of articles, summarize them, and suggest how the information could be applied in this lab.” The latter sounds an awful lot like what you’re actually doing.
19

Wow, I’d never even thought of that… Although being a professor isn’t really my goal, that could easily change. Did you all decide on industry vs. academia (or even think about it) when you decided on graduate programs? Is that a common thing?

20

That’s essentially what all my peers did. It’s not like they totally came up with the concept themselves or anything - they just did lab work for a block and gave the faculty member their results to do with it what they will. Plus, since all of them worked in the same biochem lab, they all gave pretty much the same presentation of their research. Seeing as how I’m not too big a fan of biochem anyway, those presentations were awesome!