<p>I am a current 2nd year NIH IRTA. I have applied to top-tier neuroscience grad programs and am wondering if other former IRTAs had a successful grad admission process.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Well it (typically) won’t hurt you at least. Your success will vary on a lot of things, I was also an IRTA but not all IRTA experiences are created equal. Sometimes you have more independence and your own project, and as long as you can talk clearly about what you did then you will be better off than most of your peers. Sometimes you serve as a glorified dishwasher, but again as long as you can talk clearly about the science and what you are interested in you will do better than most of your peers.</p>
<p>The benefits of the IRTA program isn’t so much that it looks great and automatically gets you into programs, it’s that you are expected to learn more and be more advanced scientifically than fresh-out-of-undergrad applicants. If you can prove that then you are usually golden</p>
<p>With one exception, neuroscience can be a very closed off field. If your research during these last two years wasn’t in neuroscience that will work against you, I had the exact experience while applying.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks. Luckily my 2nd year as an IRTA was in a neuroscience lab.</p>
<p>Did you end up being accepted into a grad program in neuroscience?</p>
<p>I was, and to schools I really enjoyed. I wouldn’t have even suspected it was a potential issue except at some of the schools they specifically asked me about why I would apply to neuroscience when my post-undergraduate research was in another specialized field. This was despite the fact that my undergrad coursework all leaned heavily neuro. </p>
<p>For you it probably won’t be an issue. Particularly if your first year was in a widely applicable area, but your second year puts you directly in the field. Know your stuff as well as you can, the extra research in this case should do nothing but help your case but it can’t sell it without your help during interviews</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I think it is a huge help that I landed this neuroscience job. Did you end up going to grad school for neuro? If so, where?</p>