<p>I'm hoping someone who's already experienced the future of a pHD student could help me out. If I had the choice of attending a highly regarded university for grad school, or a not quite as highly regarded school who has a partnership with the NIH which would involve most research being conducted there, is there some way I could tell which might be better for a future career?</p>
<p>Would working at the NIH offer any advantages that you'd see, as opposed to staying in a university atmosphere for grad school?</p>
<p>I don't think one is necessarily advantageous over the other, but which schools specifically are we talking about here?</p>
<p>The good thing about working at the NIH is that there's always money to buy new reagents and fund experiments -- there's more worry about funding in the average university lab than there is at the NIH. And it's definitely nice not to worry about funding!</p>
<p>I only worked at the NIH for a summer, but one disadvantage that I saw was that the labs were very large, and I can't imagine most students get a lot of face time with their PIs. There also aren't very many grad students -- lots of techs and lots of postdocs, but few grad students.</p>
<p>it depends on the lab, the lab that i worked at was very small and I had lots of face time with the pi. Funding is one of the more important things, its good to work with someone whose hhmi or is at nih</p>
<p>I guess I'm thinking prestige-wise; I know they have a lot of equipment and great resources. I guess I'm wondering if people regard doing research at the NIH as an advantageous move? Will future employers or post-doc PIs look favorably on this?</p>