<p>But… don’t you have to be good in a discipline in order to be productive in research assistance? I mean, what do you exactly do in a research project? Wash dishes?</p>
<p>I thought individual study was for someone with very strong understanding of the subject.</p>
<p>You have to remember that research is really specialized. Most undergrad classes don’t really cover what’s going on in a lab. Once you’ve taken the intro level classes in a subject and understand the basic principles, you can do pretty much any research as long as you go in willing to learn. You wouldn’t be able to come up with your own project right away, but it certainly shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for anyone who wants a PhD in the subject to help faculty with their research. You would gain an understanding of the subject and the specific project along the way. And no, you wouldn’t just have to watch dishes. Besides, the point of research is that you don’t already know the answer. You figure it out as you do the research.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily that true. A friend and I did a “Supervised Reading” thing where we outlined our own class around computational methods used in materials science. Neither of us knew anything about it, but we wanted to learn. We found a faculty member that uses computational modeling in his research and got him to supervise us. It was a ton of fun since I to choose which programming assignments I wanted to do and which didn’t seem very interesting. My friend and I actually did a good enough job with it they decided to use the programs we wrote as a basic outline for a new course they were starting on computational methods within the department.</p>
<p>Ah, now I get it.
But still, it seems weird to me that research is far more important than GPA or GRE in grad school admissions. If I don’t major in psych or soc, 80~90% of my coursework will be unrelated to research. (right?) I just… don’t get that 10~20% determines the chance of admission. What remains to motivate me to do my best on all of my classes, other than my personal devotion to learn?</p>
<p>You never know what’ll come in handy for your research or life some point down the line. I took an electrochemistry course a few years back “just for fun,” thinking I was going to do semiconductors for my PhD, but now it’s looking like I’m going to be doing my thesis based around corrosion of amorphous materials (pretty far away from each other, even though they are within the same major discipline).</p>
<p>I’m… a bit discouraged. I thought GPA was important in grad admissions.</p>
<p>GPA is important, but not the specific courses you take (unless you take advanced courses, graduate level material).</p>
<p>GPA is an indicator of how hard you’re willing to work and how good of a student you are going to be.</p>
<p>Research is an indicator of how hard you have worked and how good of a researcher you are going to be.</p>
<p>Ideally, you would want both in grad school admissions, since, as a graduate student, you are going to be both of these things.</p>
<p>I have a similar question. If I have a major in economics in Sweden. Am I eligible to apply for a PhD in political science in USA?</p>
<p>Advanced courses? As in, 300 or 400 level courses?</p>
<p>no, advanced courses as in you took graduate level classes while you were an undergrad.</p>
<p>Yes, many places have an elusive 500 / 5000 level block for advanced undergraduates with at least such-and-such a GPA and at least such-and-such credit hours, etc.</p>
<p>If you exhaust these (or close to it), you may even break into the 600, 700, or 800 level (though sometimes, 600 / 6000 level courses are just graduate repeats of 500 / 5000 level courses).</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=impsuit]
I’m… a bit discouraged. I thought GPA was important in grad admissions.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>It definitely is. But at the top programs (nearly) everyone has a high GPA, so it’s best to spend your time doing other things to distinguish yourself from the others, namely, research. It’s kind of like the GRE: having a low GPA (or GRE score) will (probably) be detrimental, but a high GPA (or GRE score) won’t help too much, as it’s expected. The continuum of research experience an undergrad can have is much larger–and, of course, it’s the best indicator of future grad school success–so it’s easier to judge candidates based on research experience and the quality of the LORs that said research enabled them to get. But, of course, there are lots of candidates who have done all of these things, so in the end it’s mostly a crap-shoot.</p>
<p>“I’m… a bit discouraged. I thought GPA was important in grad admissions.”</p>
<p>On the contrary, I feel like this was the most encouraging thing about grad admissions. I applied for graduate school in a different field (see previous post). I had spent undergrad taking courses that I was interested in, while finding out what I liked and didn’t like-- often also getting lower grades because I was spending so much time exploring and working in lab ALL the time. </p>
<p>None of my research had much of anything to do with my major- I learned pure chemistry in class and worked in a bioengineering lab out of class, doing awesome microfluidics projects and applying it to cancer therapeutics. I enjoyed every minute of my exploration, but thought that my resulting 3.1 GPA would come back to haunt me in the grad school application process. I was pleasantly shocked to see that I was in turn rewarded for my enjoyment of research and my willingness to explore. I applied to all top programs in biomedical science and am happy to have gotten into three out of five! I’m willing to bet that this could never have happened in any other situation, and that’s how I know I’ve made the right choice. </p>
<p>Good research demands true commitment, which can only be fueled by passion. If I had lacked that passion, I would not have done as well in research but would have probably gotten better grades, which are worth more in other places. Just my two cents. :)</p>
<p>ymmit: you go to MIT, right? I think that probably played some kind of role in your admissions to top programs. I doubt someone from, say, a state school with a 3.1 would have gotten the same results. But who knows?</p>
<p>I remember my academic advisor told me sophomore year when I was bummed about getting a C in Chem2 that grad schools are looking for outstanding researchers, not outstanding students. Commit yourself to your research, remember that that’s the most important thing, and just don’t let anything else slide out of hand. Get above a 3.0, preferably above a 3.5, and you’re good. That’s the attitude I took and it worked out really well for me. This isn’t med school we’re talking about.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But a 3.1 at MIT is like a 2.1 at other schools, since MIT is on a 5-point scale ;)</p>
<p>Haha, yes- you are right. I have a 4.1/5.0 in MIT terms. I don’t think anyone would get anywhere with a 3.1/5.0… Except maybe R. B. Woodward who skipped/failed all his classes at MIT because he was always working in lab, got kicked out due to that and let back in later, finished his entire undergrad in one year and received his PhD the next year (the same time as his original classmates were getting their bachelors). And then he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965. There’s the ultimate example of what I was trying to illustrate, I suppose. :P</p>
<p>“GPA is important, but not the specific courses you take (unless you take advanced courses, graduate level material).”</p>
<p>This is not true. The specific courses you take are important both in terms of GPA and in terms of admissions.</p>
<p>In some programs, they want you to have basic intro classes in your field. Sometimes this will be explicitly stated (you are required to have X amount of hours in XXX field), and other times it will not be but will be expected. I don’t think our department webpage says anything about hours required but it’s expected that you have a major in, or close to one, in psychology.</p>
<p>And what classes you got what GPA in does matter. If you have a 3.2 overall GPA but your GPA in your major is a 3.8, well, that matters. If it’s the other way around, that matters too, but in a bad way. You can have a 3.8 overall GPA but in my department no one cares if you got your As in modern history or principles of acting – they want to see As and Bs in research methods, statistics, learning and memory, history and systems, psychometrics, etc.</p>
<p>After you’ve reached a certain threshold in GPA and GRE (for my department the GRE needs to be above 1200 and the GPA I’d estimate somewhere around 3.5 range) it doesn’t really matter anymore – what’s important, and where you will be compared at, is your research. When my lab’s post-doc brought the students in for us to informally interview she didn’t say “And Molly has a 3.5 with a 1500 GRE,” she said, “Molly comes to us from such-and-such university and she’s doing research with this person, this is what her research experience is like in the field.” No one cares about the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.9 – great, you can get good grades, that means you’ll be able to jump through the hoops of classes. We want people who will rake in the publications.</p>