<p>If you're not interested in pursuing a career in research, do you still have to do research in a lab in order to get an undergraduate or graduate degree?
How do you find a professor who is understanding of the mistakes that undergrads make because of their relative lack of experience?
I know each college has its share of good/bad professors, but which top colleges on the whole tend to have more professors that are more understanding and willing to work with undergrads(work with= as in answer questions, make suggestions,meet with the undergrad three times a week)?</p>
<p>^you need to do research if you want to get into grad school but if you don’t you can definitely not do any your undergrad years and graduate fine. </p>
<p>There’s really no set formula for finding understanding and helpful professors. In general younger professors can be more helpful but I’ve definitely seen exceptions. I would suggest meeting with professors and assessing how friendly they seem in person as well as asking people who might know how it is like to work in their labs. </p>
<p>I highly doubt that there are top colleges with more understanding profs than others. They all probably have a roughly equal distribution…</p>
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<p>While that’s usually the sort of response I’d give, I have to wonder whether salary differences will have a visible effect on the professors’ willingness to work with students amiably.</p>
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Every undergrad makes mistakes – that’s seen as part of the training, and professors are, in part, willing to train undergrads because some of the undergrads will become grad students, postdocs, and professors. The professors went through it themselves. It’s seen as educating the next generation.</p>
<p>why do you need to do research in order to get into grad school?
how much research do people who go on to top universities do during their undergrad years?
I hear that grad students usually mentor the undergrads not the proffessors, is this true for all universities?</p>
<p>thank you!</p>
<p>^There’s no hard fast rule to how much research you need but I’d say the more the better. Definitely someone doing 3 years of research including summer internships has a significant advantage over someone who has, say, one summer’s internship experience. </p>
<p>I don’t think there’s an average for how much research students at top schools do. Its pretty common where I go for students to start either their sophomore or junior year. </p>
<p>Yes you’ll usually go to the grad student for help not the prof. The professor is there not to guide you through every tiny thing but rather to check up on you and make sure that everything is going well. A good professor is one who continually makes sure that his undergrad student is learning and benefiting and frequently touches base with him.</p>
<p>“Yes you’ll usually go to the grad student for help not the prof”</p>
<p>It depends on the dynamic of the lab. I worked in two different labs as an undergrad. In one, I worked primarily with a post doc and I saw the PI maybe a handful of times in that year. In my other lab, I had weekly meetings with the PI, she was very involved in everyone’s work.</p>
<p>^yes belevitt but even when you do have weekly meetings with the professor (I’ve had both experiences as well) when your reaction isn’t working or when you can’t find a chemical you go to the grad student/post doc not the professor!</p>
<p>Go to a school where faculty have high research productivity in your field.</p>
<p>Go to a school where a high proportion of bachelors graduates in your field go on for PhDs.</p>
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Because grad school is about research and nothing else, and you need to know that you love research enough to do it 60 hours a week for five or more years. Grad schools want to know that you’ll be able to get yourself through your PhD program, and people who are poorly prepared in terms of research experience tend to drop out of PhD programs at higher rates.</p>
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I think it’s worth noting that this isn’t just all about power – the professor is probably not in the lab very much, if at all, and the grad students and postdocs are the ones on the ground who know where all the materials are and how to do the protocols. 
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<p>If you asked my faculty advisor where to find the chemicals or how to run one of our lab’s machines, he’d stare at you like you had three heads. He hasn’t done bench work in twenty years!</p>
<p>^I of course completely agree with mollie. </p>
<p>It’s not the professor’s job to work in the lab and so naturally they aren’t going to know the nitty gritty details of the lab. They’ll still know what the machines in their lab do and they will definitely be able to read results from the machine.</p>