<p>I do know that this question has been asked before, but I have not seen a concise thread on it. I was just wondering what advice you would give a freshman Chemical Engineering student to get into a grad school like MIT, CalTech, etc (whichever has the program I want).</p>
<p>I have already started research. I actually started research the summer before my Freshman year and am doing Organic Synthesis research this year (Freshman). What else would you suggest I do during undergrad?</p>
<p>Its a little silly to worry about graduate school at this point. You just started college 2 weeks ago and haven’t completed a single chem-e class. </p>
<p>Just keep your grades high, and do research.</p>
<p>I’m already half-way through the semester and am currently taking CHE classes due to AP credit. I just wanted some general advice to start early.</p>
<p>Alright, there are a few things wrong with this question.</p>
<p>1:
It is too early to be worrying about graduate school. It is not, however, too early to have it in the back of your mind. If you think you may want to do it, it is definitely an extra incentive to keep your grades up and get research done (the latter of which you clearly are already on top of). Still, you have a lot of school left, and there is no guarantee that you will even still be interested in graduate school when all is said and done. Keep your grades as high as possible while you still think it is an option, but don’t close all your other doors either. A lot can change in 4 years, and you may be a totally different person by then.</p>
<p>2:
You are a freshman. You have a ton of time left, and I highly down that you can say definitively that you want to work specifically in [insert research area here] for the rest of your life when you have only just begun to get a taste of ChemE. Graduate school is all about specialization, and you can’t really plan for graduate school until you have an idea of what you want to specialize in.</p>
<p>3:
Get the idea of going to a “top grad school like MIT” out of your head - temporarily. In graduate school, one school is not going to be the best for all research areas in a given field. That almost never happens. In graduate school, it is much more important to work under an advisor who is at the top of his specific subfield than it is to work at the school with the excellent brand name. True, people at the top of their field do tend to congregate at the name-brand schools, but that is not a universal law, and you would really be shorting yourself to go to an overall better school to pass up the chance to work with a truly renowned advisor at a “lower ranked” school. For example, I could have gone to Georgia Tech for graduate school in AeroE, but I passed it up to go to TAMU to work with a professor who is absolutely a superstar in my field. I don’t regret it at all.</p>
<p>Now, as for my advice:
Research experience is not just about having the experience in research. Use that experience to really make connections with several professors. That will help you in several ways. First, you may be able to sneak in a publication as an undergraduate, which is pure gold on an application. Second, it leads to getting very nice letters of recommendation from said professors. Third, it allows you to try and use those professors’ connections at [insert top school here] as a leg up on getting into the school. You really hit the jackpot if your professor has close personal connections with someone at that school.</p>
<p>Other than that, you are doing all you can at this point in time. Research experience is the most important thing to get, and you are already doing it.</p>
<p>boneh3ad, thank you for your answer! It is definitely the insight I was looking for. I do know that I’m a freshman and that I have a lot of time… I think I just feel like I have a lot of pressure on me because two of my siblings are in PhD programs at well-regarded universities. I was hesitant in asking this question too because I figured that many people would say that as a freshman there is no reason to even start considering yet. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the advice.</p>
<p>Get the idea of going to a “top grad school like MIT” out of your head</p>
<p>One of the most important things to base your grad school choice on is not on the name but rather the investigations taking place/available. Don’t necessarily look for top grad schools, instead look for research that interests you. There are so many things out there and not every place has the same kind of research. First look for what field of research you like the most because you will be working in this field for 5-7 years of your life and probably more (post-doc). Only then after you have pin pointed what field you like should you choose your grad school based on which ones have the research programs that you like.</p>
<p>Yes, thank you for the advice. That is actually why I added “(whichever has the program I want)” because I meant whatever school is good in the program that I would choose. The whole “top grad school” thing was just meant to spark answers.</p>
<p>I understood “program” given your context as simply what degree was being offered - for instance, the Chemical Engineering “program,” or the Biomedical Engineering “program,” etc. The courses in a Chemical Engineering program at varying schools will be relatively similar however the research taking place at varying schools will not be. For instance, the Biomedical Engineering graduate program one school may have a research going on dealing specifically with engineering liver mimics (classified as polymeric biomaterials/cell & tissue engineering). Hop on over to the Biomedical Engineering program at another school and they may not have research in polymeric biomaterials or cell & tissue engineering going on. And ideally, there should not be any other schools performing the exact same kind of research that one school is already taking on. And therefore in this sense, if there is a very specific research investigation that tickles you so much that you realize you must be a part of it, you might only have a very few schools to choose from.</p>
<p>I’m talking about the specific research investigation that you will be required to take on as a graduate student and publish papers on and work in the lab on, not the overall graduate degree program. If you’re talking about the same thing, my apologies.</p>
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<p>Probably one of the worst reasons to get a PhD, in any field. If you aren’t in love with the subject matter, acquired through intensive research with it, then it makes absolutely no sense. This isn’t a “collect the set and impress your parents!” </p>
<p>It’s always suspect when a young person wants a PhD long before they can possibly know they have the right intrinsic passion and talent for research in the subject area. As a general rule, graduate schools are trying to weed out such people.</p>