Part Three: Researching Graduate Schools
Happy thursday (almost friday)!
The week is almost over - woohoo!! I actually love my job and hope I can say the same about my Ph.D. position. I hope you as well can say the same. Your Ph.D. (or Masters) is going to engulf your life and it’s probably all you’re going to think about (I mean…that’s my guess…I haven’t started yet). So, this decision is pretty important.
But, don’t let that stress you out too much - I firmly believe you’ll end up where you’re needed to be. Nevertheless, it’s a scary process and can seem daunting at times. Here’s my little two cents about researching grad school options (+ professors), and how to keep track of all of it!
As I mentioned in the last blog post, you’ll be applying to the professor first, not the school. So, when you’re researching schools, you’re actually going to be looking at the professor. It is important to take into account the school and the place, but if you find an amazing professor that you love and they’re not at an R1 school - that’s okay! One of my mentors always told me it’s the professor that matters, not the actual school.
Where to start??
The first step is to get organized. I recommend creating a spreadsheet to keep track of all the professors, who you reach out to, and who respond to you. I will say I did NOT do a good job at this and got really lazy. I never reached out to someone twice, but my efficiency levels definitely decreased. Here is my updated spreadsheet that I would use if I had to go through this process again. Feel free to update it as needed and add or delete tabs you want/don’t want.
2. Start finding professors → To find professors, there are a lot of different things you could look at (we’ll get into that). When looking for your potential PI, go to the Biology part of a University’s website and start searching for faculty. As an example, I’ll show you where my PI is located on the website.
Once on this page of a website, there are a few different variations of what you could find. Some universities let you filter by interest (genetics, ecology, behavior, etc), whereas some might have lists of professors that are or aren’t accepting students. In this case, all we have is a list of faculty. So, if I were you, I’d start looking through some of the professors and reading about their interests and work. If something really catches your eye, try reading some papers from them. If you’re interested, put them on the spreadsheet!
Here’s Mitch’s profile! In this case, I don’t see an introduction of sorts so I’d go to his website to learn more. Normally on their website, there’s an information page/contact page where you can see if the professor is taking graduate students for the fall. If they are, that’s your cue to start your email to them!
How do you find professors?
Start with schools you like/are near you → The first colleges I looked at were places I would consider going to. For me, those were schools in a 5-hour radius of my house or schools that I knew had a good Animal Behavior program (obviously I did NOT end up 5 hours from my house…). Make sure to keep track of which universities you have looked at so you don’t look through them again! But, keep in mind some professors might not have their websites updated so you might see something like, “I’m not taking any grad students for the Fall of 2023”. If you see that, they just haven’t updated it - so reach out anyways.
One of my favorite ways to find professors is to look at the PIs on papers that I have read or papers that I find! This is how I found many of the professors I applied to. If you read a lot of papers, go through them and search for the names of the authors. If not, go on google scholar search what you’re interested in. Normally googling an author’s name will bring you to their lab website of sorts and you can do exactly what we did in step 2 with looking at their website.
Lastly, if you’re in a research lab and love what you’re doing, ask your mentor for contacts that they know. Use your connections to your advantage. And remember, it doesn’t hurt to reach out.
If you don’t know what you’re interested in, I highly recommend starting with a Master’s degree. I knew and have known what I’ve wanted to do for a while, so skipping my Master’s wasn’t an issue. I’m confident that I’ll love my job!
Secondly, there are some programs out there that do lab rotations. In these types of universities, you normally apply to the university and will get put in a lab rotation with a few professors. Then, throughout the semester, you can decide on which PI you want to work for. I don’t know much more about them than this so I recommend doing your research if this is the route you want to go! It just wasn’t for me.
Hopefully, this blog inspired you to start looking for professors. To be honest, I think it was my favorite part. There’s so much research out there and so many people with really intriguing papers to read. As for the number of professors to apply to, it really depends on the year. In my opinion, not a lot of professors were taking students. In the end, I think I emailed about 40 professors and heard back from almost most of them with at least an answer.
Next week, I’ll explain what to do once you’ve found professors you’re interested in. Stay tuned!!