<p>hi,
so im going to be joining a phd program in biology this fall and i was wondering if anyone had any idea when would be a good time to start approaching professors regarding rotations in their labs.. i asked the registrar, and she said that people choose once they get there in august.. isnt that a bit too late?</p>
<p>It probably depends on your program, but in my program many people wait until they get to campus to set up a first rotation. During orientation, there is a poster session for new first-years to see the research professors in my program are doing, and to decide what interests them enough to contact the professors later. Certainly you don’t need to set up second and third rotations until much later.</p>
<p>If you wanted to email a few PIs now, I’m sure that would be fine, but they may want to meet you in person before offering you a rotation spot.</p>
<p>I set up my first rotation immediately after being accepted but I am interested in a lab that I draws a lot of individuals. It is advantageous because I have been able to read up ahead of time on the subject matter I will be working with.</p>
<p>Some programs specifically ask incoming grad students not to contact faculty until they arrive on campus, but this is your career and you can do what you want.</p>
<p>As Mollie said, it probably depends on the program. Most people at my school do not set up rotations in advanced. I sat up my first rotation with only a phone interview with the PI. I do not recommend this. You are better off visiting tons of labs, and talking to both the PI and the lab members. </p>
<p>Some schools do have very popular labs, so you will need to set up rotations in these labs very early. There is one lab here that filled all of their rotation spots (7 of them) several weeks before school started. The majority of the labs are not this way.</p>
<p>I recommend that you do not plan all three rotations in August. You will meet other faculty after you arrive, and you will learn which labs to stay away from. I recommend that you email a bunch of faculty several weeks before you arrive and ask:
- Are they taking grad students into their lab this year?
- Are they taking rotation students? (some will require you to rotate at certain times of the year)
- Do they typically have a lot of rotation students? Do you need to commit to a rotation early on?</p>
<p>thanks for that guys… it really helped… ive also been told by people that the first rotation isn’t generally the best one because you’re settling in etc. is that generally true?</p>
<p>it depends on what you want to get out of a rotation-- rotations are mainly about you figuring out if you like the lab and the types of experiments that they do, and the lab figuring out if they like you. It’s not so much about results-- so from that angle the settling in doesn’t really matter. I decided that I wanted to rotate first with the professor that I thought that I wanted to work for coming in. My reasoning was that then I would know whether I liked the lab enough to join (although I assumed I would, but wanted to make sure that there wasn’t something that I didn’t know). I could then choose to rotate later with people whose work I was interested in, but whose lab I wouldn’t necessarily think of joining (ie ppl with an only computational lab) without stressing about it.</p>
<p>I would be worried about leaving the professor that you really really want to work with until the last rotation, because you might not get along with them or the lab might not be the best fit</p>
<p>In regards to when to rotate in a lab that you think you want to join, the contrasting arguement is that you will be better prepared (techniques) to rotate in a lab if you have completed two rotations all ready. One lab I was interested in joining initial lacks patients for teaching new techniques to rotation students (expected to already know it). I would have done a lot better on this rotation, if I had completed some of the techniques before hand. Many other labs expect that students will learn stuff, and doing this during a rotation is fine. but even these labs will be more impressed if they dont have to train you.</p>
<p>OP: The 1st rotation is typically blown. A few people in my program joined their 1st roation lab, but most joined a later lab. PIs at my school know this and a big number of them will not take fall rotation students and others take them but dont seriously consider them joining the lab.</p>
<p>I think the problem with the 1st rotation is that students dont know what they really want in a lab and how to talk to PIs about rotations. Students also do not know which labs are good and which labs to stay away from.</p>
<p>If you want to do a rotation in a comp bio lab or some other lab you may not want to join, I recommend doing that rotation first since it is rare for people to join the 1st lab.</p>