Everyone has an idea of what they want to do, but nobody really knows what being a professor involves until after they start graduate school (and even then, it’ll be a while before you get the full view). Likewise, people who are coming in without industry experience don’t know what it’s like to be in industry. Plan on your plan changing.
This has been my experience as well, in a hydrology PhD program. Between your work at an environmental engineering firm this summer and the next year of supervising a lab, you’ll probably stand out from other applicants who’ve recently finished their undergrad degrees. Zut is right about the value of your TA experience as well - a year spent supervising undergrads in a lab is probably going to give you more practical experience than most undergrad research projects would anyway. Spend some time talking to the faculty members you’re working for as well, and find out what they’re doing - they may be happy to have some volunteer help as well.
Where I am, the graduate school won’t admit students directly to a PhD program without an MS degree as a general rule. Instead, students will be admitted to an MS course and can re-apply for the PhD program (with their adviser’s permission) after a year. The assumption is that nobody’s really prepared without having some graduate-level research experience - more than you’d get as an undergrad.
Oh I don’t know. One of my Spanish classmates, upon hearing of my American plans, decided to apply for graduate school Over There as well. One of the places she applied to contacted her because…
School: I’m sorry, but we can’t find your application for Assistance. (Translation: have you asked for a job as a TA?)
Her: Oh, I didn’t send it, we can pay for the tuition and everything, so I don’t need it.
School: Ehm, you do need to send it. Really.
Her: No, no, my family is rich.
School: Great. But we won’t give a PhD to someone who’s never taught. So you do need to send the Assistance Request form.
Again, it depends on the field and the school. But the thing is, even if you never work in academia, as a team leader you will be training people, so some teaching experience is basic.
My MSc in Chemistry, like so many others, is a PhD Dropout Degree. I met several hundred people who were studying towards PhDs in Chemistry, but never one who had actually asked to get an MSc, although they are offered. Maybe that’s partly because so many of us were foreigners and well, if you’re putting extra time into school either you want to be Lab Head Kahuna (normally a PhD) or you want to be a Professor (PhD again).
I’m in CS (so different field) and IME it’s effectively a requirement for top PhD programs. But that said, it’s not at all uncommon for people to pick up most of their research experience after they finish the standard 4 years of undergrad. Either they are accepted into an MS and are rolled into the PhD program, or finish the MS and start at a new school (what I did), or they got a job on a research project and just took off with that. If someone were short on experience then I’d encourage them to consider one of these paths, at least as a Plan B.
My PhD is in Computer Science, a long time ago, and I decided that at the last minute, more or less, when I discovered that not all the students I would teach were very smart. Back when I graduated there was a lot more research going on in industry.I’ve spent 30 years more or less doing research, but applied to real world stuff, publishing, running conferences, and having a great time. And mostly no grant proposals! A friend of mine is a PhD chemist in DuPont. I knew other people who got PhDs and went into real industry, and who were fed up with research. So I wouldn’t worry about deciding on this now. If you were planning to major in English Lit, the advice would be different.
Research for undergrads was just starting when I was in college. I didn’t do it (everyone at MIT does nowadays, pretty much) but I did do an undergrad thesis which probably counted - though I applied to grad school before I was very far along. My daughter is a senior in Psych this year, and Honors students are expected to do research their senior year. However only really exceptional undergrads are going to have the time and background to do anything resembling original research. I’d think your other experience is going to count a lot in your favor.
That’s odd. My older daughter is in grad school in Psych, and was in Economics before (more or less lab oriented - behavioral econ) and got in to a PhD program directly. Does your school support MS students? In my experience PhD students get to RA and TA, and MS students get to pay. There was also a big class divide, in that PhD students had real advisers and got to meet with them often, whole the advisers of MS students looked at the MS thesis (if there was one) and that was about it. PhD students worked on the advisers’ grants and wrote papers, while MS students took classes and did minor projects.
My wife went to Dartmouth in Bio, where every grad student got support, but even there is was pretty much all PhD. I’m curious about how your system works.
Wow, there is a lot of diversity. When I was in grad school there was no such requirement. I TAed when my adviser ran out of grant money, and then after he died and I was looking around for another. In the second place I went (after I decided no one in the first place would do) I was specifically told I didn’t have to teach - which they reversed when they were short of teachers one term.
However, I think forcing people to teach is a good rule.
Voyager and Enginerd, if I understand correctly from my engineer friends, the masters-as-prereq-to-doctorate is a phenomenon that is pretty much restricted to engineering, as there are a lot more people interested in getting Masters degrees in engineering in general (as well as a lot more who then decide they want to go on and get their Ph.D.). I don’t think that’s the case in any pure sciences (or humanities) I know of, where the masters-as-consolation-prize paradigm is much more likely to apply.
I totally thought I was going into academia before, oh, halfway through my doctorate, so yeah, there’s a lot of time to decide. Hard science rocks!
I think that might be the case, seeing as how most of the schools I’ve checked out seem to have a “oh, by the way, we also give masters degrees too” attitude.
Nava, just for the fun of it, what did you study in grad school?
I was in CS, but we were very close to the EE department, and I know tons of EE faculty professionally, and have never heard that. I got an MS only because I was switching schools and wanted something tangible, but lots of people in my group never got them. Now lots of people enrolled to get a masters, since they were valuable, but we had a quals process second year which had different requirements for MS and PhD students. It’s been a long time, so maybe it changed, but I can’t see the advantage to the faculty of winnowing later. In fact, I was visiting an EE prof at Michigan last November, and it was clear that there were first year students in the PhD program. (Unofficially, of course, since you have to jump through all the hoops to be official.)
Boring biology major, and went into a biomedical field. I’m one of the lucky ones though! I have a good paying job (outside of academia) where I get to do lab work all day with no budgetary constraints or strings attached!
That said, someone above mentioned “pyramid scheme”. Make no mistake, that’s exactly what it is. I say this not from sour grapes, but as someone at the top of the pyramid who isn’t reliant on the system so can honestly say that the odds of you not being used up and spit out are very low.
(I was thinking of starting a thread about this once, but I was worried no one would believe the numbers. With all due respect to underpaid teachers, you have nothing on scientists!)
I’m an academic in the UK and run an organic chemistry group. Undergrad research experence is important to me for recruitment just because it makes everything easier. First and foremost it means I can get a reference, from someone I know and respect, that says 'I would take this person on in my research group’. Beyond that, it also tells me that this person knows how to run a column, can interpret an NMR etc etc - has basic technique. Maybe they’ve done two months in the lab and got absolutely no results, so can see how tough research can be, they understand how you need to re-assess ideas and adapt in the lab.
So it’s maybe harder for the OP lacking those easy reference points, but by no means impossible to get into a competitive program. Character and enthusiasm for chemistry counts for a huge amount, especially if backed up with a bit of raw talent. It’s just going to be a harder decision for potential advisors to make.
Small liberal arts colleges produce great scientists. I was at a large organometallics conference last week and I’m always struck by the background of American academics. Several of the plenary speakers cvs where along the lines of ‘…undergrad at South West Texas mining college, followed by a PhD at Harvard, then postdoctoral work at Berkeley’ It seems that small liberal arts colleges in the US, with little to no research profile, provide the base education to graduate extremely talented people who go on to great things in science. It’s striking to me because there is no parallel in the UK.
But note the second destination of these guys - they all have uniformly attended fantastic graduate programs. This is really essential, and the OP shouldn’t settle for second best here. The US chemistry PhD is too long and too hard to risk taking on in a non-competitive group.
Well, awesome. Now I have all kinds of things to look forward to.
Thank you so much for all of this, it’s exactly what I was looking for! The last part, though, is what scares me… does not having research experience make me go to “second best” by default?
Hey, if you’re anything like me, no dour warnings are going to make any difference in your plans. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Seriously, fields other than biology, like chemistry aren’t nearly as bad because the industry option is much more prevalent. However, in biology, industry scientist postions are just as coveted, and rarer, than academic scientist positions.
Also, I literally had no lab experience, no professor who knew my last name, and just slightly above mediocre grades, so I’m saying there’s a chance for you. I had ridiculously high GREs and came from a great undergraduate school was really all I had going for me.
But make sure this is what you want. In a few years, when the idealism fades, and you see people much dumber than you with houses and families and 401K plans, it will start to get to you!
I have recent first-hand experience in applying to and attending chemistry graduate school (organic). Yes, research experience is important. Not just in getting into the program, but also in getting into a lab. Profs compete for the better students. Even the best departments have crap faculty. One of the biggest problems is that people jump into the research and decide they don’t like it. You can be super smart, but if you don’t want to be there, things aren’t going to go well. If people already have experience, then the schools and faculty can see that you at least know (sort of) what research is like. Pretty much everyone in the programs that I’ve directly experienced has undergrad research under their belts. If they couldn’t at their school, they did summer NSF-REUs or worked in industry.
There is always the option of working in industry for a year or two. Lots of people do this.
That said, even the best programs have people with no previous research experience.
I’d be happy to discuss this further. Probably not tonight, but we’ll see.
This is what I’m worried about, and I guess what my original question was - how big of a “make or break” factor is research experience when applying to grad schools? Obviously if you had me and bizarro-me side by side (the latter having done research) the latter would be preferable, but how big of an obstacle is it to overcome?
I can’t speak for the school as a whole, but the hydrology program supports all the full time students. Faculty members with research funding get first pick of the incoming students, and they can choose MS or PhD students (assuming their funding sources are ok with their choices). The faculty member supporting a student with research funding generally serves as the student’s adviser, so the research collaboration/advising is built into both MS and PhD programs. An MS student who’s only there for two years won’t be as involved as a PhD student, but it’s nothing like what you’re describing here. I’d guess about a third of our MS students end up as an author (not usually first, though) on some of their master’s work.
It should probably be noted that this is a hydrology program in one of the driest states in the country, and we have formal ties to a number of dedicated research facilities as well. I wouldn’t say that it’s easy to find research funding, but it’s not anywhere near as difficult here as it is in other programs.
Aside from research funding, the program has three TA positions, and these are used as a recruiting tool. Incoming students who aren’t chosen for research assistantships can TA for one semester, but the program will offer support for the full academic year (during which they’re expected to find an adviser and work with him or her to secure research funding for the future). New applicants are given preference for the TA positions, but current students may be offered positions if no incoming students are qualified (current students are paid only for the semester that they teach). PhD students who TA are paid $500/semester more than MS students, but MS students end up doing it more often.
The program also has a small amount of bridge funding to get students through a month or two between grants or semesters. If you can show past and future support, they’ll float you for up to three months in a one-time deal.
Despite my name (a relic from a past life), I’m not in an engineering program. The requirement I mentioned is a university-wide policy - the grad school won’t immediately admit students who don’t have an MS to a PhD program. That doesn’t mean, though, that you have to finish the MS. After a year, you can reapply for admission to PhD with your adviser’s blessing. A number of students do this, but more than a few see what’s in store and decide to stick with the MS without the stigma of a “consolation prize.”
It gives the school an opportunity to make up some of the huge budegt cuts coming down from the Governor’s office by chiseling another $40 (last year - now it’s $50!) out of us as a second application fee.
It’s what Busy Scissors said: the faculty are looking for someone who will be a successful graduate student. That means getting through the PhD program, requiring minimum supervision, learning and applying new material, and starting to think for yourself. That description encompasses a broad range of skills. Some, but not all, of those skills can be demonstrated by doing undergraduate research.
I don’t think research experience is a make-or-break factor, unless your particular field is extremely competitive. Having the *opportunity *to do research just isn’t a significant indicator of potential performance like, say, GPA would be. (Or, apparently the GRE.)
In any case, since you’re in school next year, any reason you don’t sign up for a few credits of research?