Grad School Triumvirate

My father got his doctorate through online courses about 2 years ago.  He was the first on my side of the family to not only attend a graduate degree program, but to receive his degree. 

I have no experience or expectations of grad school besides that it's supposed to be hard.

Both of John's parents went grad school.  His dad graduated with a DVM degree, and his mom with a PhD degree.  John's brother graduated with an MD degree.  Higher degree programs and graduate school is no stranger to his family. 

Thankfully, we can depend on John's parents to understand and help us through the various pressures and stresses of graduate school.

The biggest decision John has to make in the next year is what to focus his research on.  John's parents came up with a list of three things that make up an ideal program.  Best case scenario: your research has all three things.  But whichever program you choose, it must have at least two of them.


I.  A Good Mentor/Primary Investigator

•  You must have a mentor who will actually mentor you; one who will teach and advise you.  Your mentor must be someone that you can work alongside with; someone who will push you to succeed and encourage you when it's hard.  

• You do not want a mentor whose personality clashes with yours, or who is rarely in the lab, or who cannot explain or teach anything.  This is a person who will have a definite, direct influence over your career as a grad student - make sure it's someone you can work with.

II.  Fascinating Research

•  You must choose your focus based on what interests you.  You will be researching that topic for the next 3-6+ years; if you aren't interested in it, you will have a difficult time putting out quality work.  Whereas if you find the research intriguing, you are pursuing the research based on your own interest, not just as a job or to get a degree.

III.  A High Graduation Rate

• You should examine the research lab you are interested in and see how long the students generally stay in that lab.  Your mentor may be amazing and the research rewarding, but if it takes the students in that lab about 10 years before they graduate ... that needs to be considered.  
• You should look for a lab with a reasonable graduation rate; 3-5 years.  You can (and should) also look into what the graduates of that lab go on to do.  Are they successful once they graduate?  Or are they now flipping burgers?

John gets to rotate between three labs this fall, and two additional labs in the spring.  The whole program is designed to help him find the perfect fit for him in his research.  Last week he narrowed his (long) list of labs he was interested in down to five.

Since he wanted to leave his final rotation open in case he wanted to repeat any lab rotation, we needed to narrow the list down one more.  So, we placed each lab up against those three principles.

Four of them met all three.  One only met two.  That made the decision much easier!

John starts his first lab rotation on Monday.  I hope he likes it!