<p>How many hours do most undergraduate students spend in the lab usually?</p>
<p>I heard that most students put in 12-15 hours per week. But some seems to put in much more, like 30 hours.</p>
<p>BTW, is Nature a very pretigious journal in the biology/medical field? (Please execuse my ignorance here. I really do not know.) I asked this not because my child has any chance to have a paper published anywhere. I heard that the PI of a lab my child may be interested in joining had one paper published there last year, and some of his friends told him that the lab is "intense." (He did not know that before he contacted the PI. He just sent an email to him and the PI seems to have no problem in allowing him to join his lab. Why is there no official interview before a member of a lab is accepted? I even wonder whether he has actually been accepted into his lab.)</p>
<p>I do not know what it means by saying that a lab is intense. If it is very intense in the sense that they expect any member in the lab to put in like 30 hours a week, I worry that it may not be a good fit for him. He is thinking of putting in 12-15 hours only, as he still needs time to continue doing the volunteering, take classes and join clubs, etc.</p>
<p>About 15 hours a week is what is expected on average. However it is quite possible that a PI could ask for more depending on the type of research conducted, deadlines, etc. Regarding the “intense” lab I would say that if your child is interested in going to a research heavy med school such as WashU it could be beneficial to put in the extra hours and work in an “intense” lab. However, if research is not something your child is too keen on, then working in an “intense” lab really shouldn’t be an issue. Btw, I’m not quite sure what kind of intensity this lab involves, but I hope your child’s peers do not deter him/her from pursuing their interests.</p>
<p>In general, it’s not very hard to be accepted into a lab as an undergrad. Grades, coursework, even previous research experience are generally not that important when considering someone for a position that a trained monkey can do. Thus, interviews are generally a formality. Professors mostly want to make sure that you are interested in the research and that you will put in the required # of hours.</p>
<p>And, yes, Nature is very prestigous, to say the least.</p>
<p>Nature is definitely one of the most prestigious.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend jumping into a 30-40 hour a week regiment in an intense lab as your first try… I’m working in an “intense” lab I guess you could say, but it took a long time to grow on me. I started out during the school year working ~10 hours per week, mostly lab tech stuff, as a volunteer. Now this summer, I’m working 35 hours a week (sometimes more, but I only get paid for 35) and I’m doing a lot more stuff. It’s very interesting, but very hard work. There were other summer students who, to say the least, did not enjoy themselves and probably won’t be working in another lab anytime soon, because they were thrown into a 30-40 hour a week schedule and were worked hard right off the bat.</p>
<p>Give yourself some time to figure out what you do and don’t like. Probably better to start off in a smaller lab with a relatively more lax PI. Even if you don’t get published, big deal, you can move on up to a bigger lab later.</p>
<p>It is also interesting that for all the recent papers that were published by members from his lab, the name of the PI was always listed as the last author, not as the first author.</p>
<p>I keep hearing from this forum or other forum that the first author carrys more weight. Is it because this PI is so nice that he lets his student (most lead students seem to be post-docs) be the first author in order to help them establish their academic career? Or, are most PIs like him? (i.e., let the lead student be the first author.) In the past 5 years, they did publish two papers on Nature, one in 2005 and the other one in 2008.</p>
<p>It is ultimately up to my child to decide whether he is capable of joining such an intense lab. As of today, he has not established much credit in research. He did start to study a paper that the professor assigned him though.</p>
<p>Zfanatic: He is probably not like you as you seem to be enthusiastic to do research as early as in the freshman year. He even walked away from a research opportunity (an opportunity he won at the college admission time) that was guaranteed to be paid by the college when he was a freshman. He was somewhat immature and really did not know what he was going to major at that time.</p>
<p>It is standard convention to list the PI as the last author and the person who does the most work is generally the first author. So, the two most important names on a publication are the first and last authors. Obviously, no undergraduate is going to be a PI so last authorship is unattainable.</p>
<p>For example: I read an article they published, about how some researchers in China were able to use a single skin stem cell from a single mouse to create another 2 mice, the researchers then mated those two mice to make 100 mice.</p>
<p>^^^^ When I talked to the phd I was shadowing he told me to not trust Nature because they don’t double check most of their stories for credibility…</p>
<p>Magazines like Scientific American, and Popular Science are better, IMO, because at least their stoires have credibility.</p>
<p>What are you talking about? Nature is absolutely prestigious. I think you’re confused as to the “nature” of those magazines. Popular Science and Scientific American are magazines written for the layperson. Nature is a scientific journal that actually publishes peer reviewed research papers and articles. Nature does not publish just “stories”, it publishes papers, which are peer reviewed (checked for credibility) in addition to magazine-like articles. I love SciAm and PopSci, but they are in a category altogether separate from Nature. Apples and oranges.</p>
<p>Also, what NCG said about authorships holds true… usually. It’s not official convention or anything, so you may see some papers where the last author is not in fact the PI.</p>
<p>publishing in a cns journal doesn’t make the lab intense-- the type of work and the philosophy of the PI make the lab intense. If you’re working in a hot field (ie stem cells at the moment), there will probably be more pressure to put more time in because everyone is worried about getting scooped. Very few PIs would expect a 30 hour commitment during the year-- the summer would be another story.</p>
<p>how much is average for doing the school year? i started working in my lab 40 hours a week but i dont know how much to cut it down for when school starts.</p>
<p>12-15 hours sounds like a lot to me. I work full time during the summer, but during the school week I work about 4. I think it might be school dependent, my pre-med advisor recommends cutting down research during the schoolyear given my school’s difficult curriculum.</p>
<p>To clarify, my child’s school does give credits to students who do research in senior year for their senior project. The end result of the project is a research paper that is used to fulfill one of the graduation requirements. You can also choose to write a paper without being in a lab, but it seems only a small fraction (like 10%) of students choose to write a survey-type tutorial paper. Because of this, it does expect a student to work in a lab for at least 10 to 12 hours each week. This hour requirement is officially written in the course listing published by the school.</p>
<p>My child once told me that he knows somebody who probably works in the lab longer than most full time workers at most companies, meaning more than 40-50 hours. She stays in the lab on most Saturdays and Sundays. I always wonder how she can maintain her GPA (and sanity.) It is rumored that she gets by with fewer hours of sleep than most other students. In one semester, she took like 4 or 5 science classes when most science majors took 2 or 3. She is definitely intense and, if her GPA and MCAT are fine, she is likely destined to some top medical school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification. My school is similar as well, many students chose to work on a biology honors thesis and can take research for credit during the semester. That class requires a time committment of at least 8 hours a week, which allows you to take less “real” classes.</p>
<p>I think the research time committment may be different for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. As a freshman, I just did basic lab chores, I can’t imagine myself doing 12-15 hours of basic chores. I don’t think we even had enough chores to do to take up 15 hours. But as a sophomore, my project really took off, and I can see myself working many hours on it, even though my courseload prevented it. Juniors and seniors can probably spend more time on individual projects, because that is when most people are working on honors theses.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation. It is nice to know that the time commitment usually increases incrementally from freshman to senior. As my child did not have much experience on this, he plans to take a somewhat lighter courseload next semester as he believes he needs to stay in the lab longer in order to catch up. Luckily, I think he has completed most of the classes required for his major, so a heavy courseload is not his concern any more.</p>