<p>Not meant to hjack the post, but how do you find out the lab culture? Say I want to get into xxx school, and I am looking for a advisor who does what I want. How do I even survey the students there?</p>
<p>I worried first about finding advisors I liked, then applied. After I was accepted, I made a point during my visits of talking alone with some of the grad students. It was VERY helpful - I found out that one group of students didn’t publish, didn’t present, and took forever to graduate, while another group published a few times, went to conferences, and on average got out two or three full years faster.</p>
<p>Yeah, pretty much your best bet is to try and talk to students while you’re on your visits after getting in. Also, don’t ask directly about those things, but ask questions that makes it more OK for them to say why they might be less than satisfied with their group.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how breaks and vacations work for fields where there is no lab or PI?</p>
<p>What field are you in where you don’t have an advisor?</p>
<p>Well, I’m not a graduate student (at least yet), but I didn’t there was a PI or labs in like pure math for example. Or is a PI just an adviser?</p>
<p>A PI is a researcher, and something like 99% of all graduate advisors are active PI’s, so the terms are often used interchangably.</p>
<p>The only grad degrees without PI’s (as a rule) are non-research degrees, like MBA’s and MD’s.</p>
<p>^^ Professors in the humanities are usually not called PIs but rather advisors or mentors. They perform the same duties/roles, however.</p>