<p>Is it not the best decision (or, Is it okay...) to take part in more than 1 research team as an undergraduate student?</p>
<p>Does it (anything) matter, whether hurt or benefit, if you're on more than 1 research team (e.g. more than 1 is bad, more than 1 is good but too much time commitment, more than 1 is not possible, more than 1 is outstanding, etc.).</p>
<p>Would individual PI's look down upon you being a part of another team? (i.e. your brain and labor are split between 2 instead of concentrated on 1)</p>
<p>And any other thoughts on this please! Thank you.</p>
<p>As I understand it, any meaningful research you do as an undergraduate is a good idea and should reflect positively on your candidacy for medical school. I wonder what the difference is between divvying your research experience up between more labs (going for quantity) or getting involved with one lab in depth (going for quality). PERSONALLY I’d go for quality over quantity, which is how I approach all my ECs–but perhaps luckily for me, 3+ years of looking for quality has also led to a nice quantity. </p>
<p>If you’d do 2 teams just so that you’d “look better,” then I wouldn’t. If you’re doing 2 teams because you think both are amazing research opportunities, give it a shot. You might find after a little while that one is way better than the other, in which case the “other one” served a great purpose of showing you what type of research you prefer. Good luck!</p>
<p>Being a part of more than one research team is generally a bad idea, particularly because of its time commitment. I actually wondered about this because I’m a part of a team now but ran into another investigation that really sparked my curiosity, so I asked a professor/advisor who told me that it’s really not a good idea and advised against it. I pondered, is it because PI’s don’t like this? And he sort of disregarded this question and just emphasized that having to split your time between the two labs is not a good idea. He said that if I really really wanted to that of course I could go for it but, again, he advised against it.</p>