It’s my dream to go into research and run my own lab someday. I know to get anywhere in this job you need to get at least a PHD. But I feel like that’s impossible for me.
I’m not a bad student, but I’m not an amazing brilliant student either. I’m taking the GRE this summer but here are my other stats;
-3.3 GPA (I hope to raise this to a 3.5 by the time I graduate, I have generally great grades in my science courses that don’t involve math, but in my math and math-based science classes I get pretty much frequent C’s
-Cell Biology & Neuroscience Major (I am doing the honors track and will be defending a thesis at the end of the year)
-I have a good deal of research experience already under my belt. Got started working in a lab summer after my freshman year. I really enjoy the work. I’ve even earned a stipend of $1000 for my research.
-I have some leadership experience, since I worked in residence hall government freshman year
-I’m in a couple of clubs, but honestly I spend so much time in the lab that I don’t have time to go to many meetings or get deeply involved with them
-I can get a letter of recommendation from the professor whose lab I work in but otherwise it’s very difficult to find other professors, I attend a large university with huge class sizes where tons of people compete for attention
Basically research has been my life in undergrad. I spend the majority of my time there. I haven’t gotten anything published yet and don’t know if I’ll be able to though…anyways I feel like my chances of getting accepted into a PHD program are next to none. I even know the exact research I want to do and a rough outline of experiments I will want to run. I’m just stressed. What do I do if I don’t get accepted into any programs? How can I improve my chances? (Aside from boosting grades, etc as that is a given and I am working at that, I promise you)
Thank you for advice.
OK, so you have a reasonable GPA and hopefully you will get a good GRE score. Your research experience is substantial but only with one professor and you have made no contact with other faculty who could write you a letter.
My guess is that you can certainly get into a Ph.D. program but maybe not in a highly selective program. Since you know the area of research you wish to pursue, then you can find the researchers who publish in this field and apply to their universities. See if your research mentor has contacts who he/she can call on to give you a boost at these schools.
You need to find two other letters of reference. You should first identify the courses in which you have done best most recently and speak to those professors about a letter. You don’t say whether you are a Junior or a Senior. It makes a difference. If you are a Junior, then you have a chance to make your self known to other professors, maybe get into an REU at another university next summer, and basically diversify your research experience. If you are a Senior, there are fewer options and you need to find faculty who are willing to write a letter based on your doing well in their class.
Be ready to apply to some lesser known or smaller programs because you need a safety or two. It sounds like you are very determined, you should be able to get into a decent Ph.D. program.
I am a big advocate of working for a few years before applying to Ph.D. programs, I feel that working in an academic lab as a technician is a great way to see if you really want to run a lab one day. Undergrad “researchers” don’t really understand what it’s like running a lab, but technicians do. Technicians not only research but help maintain the laboratory budget, aid in grant writing, maintain safety rules and regulations for the lab, keeping tabs on inventory, etc. You can’t just love research to run a lab - you have to love grant writing, reviewing papers, mentoring others, etc. Being a technician will expose you to all of these things. Furthermore, many technicians get to do significant research which can result in publications, which is a huge help for highly competitive programs. You might be a technician in a lab and realize that you hate all of these things and that you don’t want to be a PI of a lab. If that’s the case, you don’t need to waste time getting a PhD when a masters would suffice.
This is a good idea, I didn’t think of it. You need a masters to be a lab tech though?
Nope! Definitely not. Lab technician, research technologist, research assistant are all names that these kinds of jobs might be under. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. I worked as a technician for 3 years.