There are many factors at play when deciding which programs to apply to and eventually attend. Everyone will have different weights that they apply to different factors of each program, and because this is so individualized it can be hard to talk about factors outside of the obvious. However, because the time of these programs are so long, I think it’s really important to consider factors that influence your life outside of training, as it will continue alongside your medical and graduate education. In this first post, I’m going to write about assessing research strengths of an institution, how to talk about the alignment of your research experience with institutional expertise, and how timing can influence your decision process.
Assessing Research Strengths
Approaching the question of “Is this university good at XYZ?” can be incredibly daunting from the outside, and even from the inside can be somewhat challenging. Institutions can have strengths in individual topic areas and weaknesses in others, or outstanding individual labs within a somewhat lackluster department. Because of the differences and heterogeneity that can exist within universities and within departments, it can be helpful to talk about assessing universities, departments, and labs individually. Many of the questions below can and should be applied to MSTP/MD-PhD programs at institutions as well.
Assessing Universities/Institutions
- How many degree programs are offered by the institution?
- Does the institution have a reputation of excellence/lack thereof in specific programs?
- How does the institution compare to others in NIH/NSF funding?
Personally, I think that the strength of a university/institution is secondary/tertiary to labs and departments. Having a good name on your degrees isn’t as important as skill development and training that will come from labs, and because labs are much more important and influential in your experience than an institution or university, these questions have lower weight for me and somewhat unimportant unless there are obvious red flags. Examples of these could be new or notoriously challenging degree programs, multiple retractions from established/tenured PIs in a given department, or accreditation/funding issues.
Assessing Departments/PhD Programs
- What is the ratio of junior:senior faculty? Does the program seem to prioritize developing junior faculty?
- What is the average time to completion for students in the program? (Both PhD and MD/PhD)
- What is the breadth of areas of research in the program/department? Do they excel at a specific subfield/discipline or have faculty across various topic areas?
- Who is the chair of the department and do they have specific goals/visions for their time as chair?
- How big is the department/program?
- How much institutional support is there for this topic area? Is is a “crown jewel” of the institution, with an established reputation?
- How do the labs break down in membership w.r.t. postdoctoral trainees versus graduate students?
In a similar way to institutional questions, some of these questions may seem somewhat secondary. However, many of these questions can start to reveal the general vibe and ethos of a program, and what they value/how they value their trainees and faculty, which will have more direct influence over your life as a PhD student. If the vast majority of faculty are in a subdiscipline that you’re not interested in, then it might not be a great fit. Similarly, if many of the established labs are primarily postdoc-driven, then it might not be the best place to develop as a graduate student.
Assessing individual labs
This is a huge question and worth its own individual post, stay tuned 🤓.
Connecting to departmental and institutional visions/goals
This is a somewhat ambiguous topic, but I think it is worth discussing briefly. In some secondary essays or in interviews, you might be asked about how your own experiences or character aligns with an institutional vision. These can seem odd to answer, since institutional visions are often rooted in values that many applicants share, and writing about principles and how you reflect those as an individual can seem ambiguous or equivocal. My advice for how to leverage this opportunity in answering this question is to use it to talk about how you can give XYZ skill or attribute of your own in service of the instutition. As a trainee, you won’t be able to offer much in the way of a lengthy resume of expertise in a topic area, but you can offer various attributes and personality/character traits that make you a good candidate, and the main goal of these questions/essays is to talk about how you can offer these to the community that exists within an institution. You likely won’t have space to talk about individual examples showing these traits in an essay, but these can be good to have on hand to answer questions in interview settings (although honestly, questions about how you align with institutional visions aren’t likely to come up during interviews)
Timing
Timing will have a strong influence over the course of both the admissions cycle and your eventual graduate education. The labs and departments that you will be looking at will not be the same when you begin your graduate work. Similarly, you will have less leverage and weight when cold-emailing a PI as an applicant versus as an accepted or matriculating student, though you will likely interview with some potential faculty mentors during the interview process. One big exception is if you are interested in a particular lab, as reaching out to students and later faculty can and should inform your decision about where to go. I’ll discuss this more when talking about interviews and selecting a PI.