_Photo by The Doctor Is In’s _

For many first-year graduate students all over the world, this time of year imposes a significant, burdensome question that each one must answer. The answer to this question will determine their happiness, stress, and livelihood for the next few years. It may even impact their entire career! This question is: What lab am I going to join? Therefore, I thought it suitable to share my experiences about how I chose my lab (although I’ve only done it once).

Why is choosing the right lab so important?

Like I said before, it really will have a significant impact on the rest of your life. I strongly believe that the amount of publications you graduate with, and their impact, will be dependent upon the lab that you join. In saying this, I’m not just referring to the lab environment, but also your PI’s name. Who knows, if you get into the right lab, you may be first author on a few review articles in your field. With that being said, that probably won’t happen if you’re a terrible scientist. Also, your mentor during graduate school will be the most significant person to write you a letter of recommendation from now on. Therefore, he or she will either help you or hurt you when applying for that Harvard post-doc or high-paying industry job. Also, the amount of time you spend in graduate school will be partially dependent upon the lab you choose. The amount of hours you work per week, the stress you accumulate, and even the length of your vacation will be affected by the lab that you join. So, choose wisely.

Most graduate schools, as far as I know, try to make this process easier by allowing (or sometimes forcing) students to rotate in 3 or more labs before actually joining the lab in which they will conduct their dissertation project. This allows the student to get an idea of what the lab will be like before committing to spend the next 4 (or more) years of their life there. This is a great thing for graduate students. Although it does prolong the amount of time you spend in graduate school, it just may prevent you from dropping out. Therefore, you should really contemplate which labs you want to rotate in.

So, how did I come up with a list of potential labs to join?

Research Interests

The first criteria that I used to narrow my list of potential labs was subject matter. What exactly is this lab’s research about. For me, I was really fascinated by Microbiology and Immunology. However, I didn’t just look at those faculty members with appointments in the Micro/Immuno department, because there are several labs that work in those fields who aren’t members of that department. So, I had to search a bit harder. On my school’s website, there is a searchable database of all of the research faculty, which includes a short description of their research interests. Therefore, I basically went through that entire list and took note of those labs who were doing research that I thought I might enjoy. I was very particular in doing this, so I narrowed my potential choices by 95%.

The reason that I used ‘research interests’ as my first criteria was because I just couldn’t imagine spending my life doing stuff that I don’t enjoy. I think that a person doing that is basically asking for misery.

Publication Record

If I remember correctly, I think this left me with about 10-15 potential labs to rotate in. Therefore, I still had to narrow this list down to 4. The next criteria I used to shorten this list was the lab’s publication record. Let’s face it: the number of publications that you graduate with, and their impact, is probably going to be the most important stuff on your CV from here on out. Therefore, you want to join a lab in which you’ll be very productive and publish frequently in high-impact journals. Consequently, if a lab is not currently publishing well, it’s unlikely that you’re going to change this by joining the lab. On the same note, if a lab is publishing well, it’s also unlikely that this trend will change. Of course, this is not always true, but it’s a safe way to think when choosing your lab.

When looking at a lab’s publication record, there are a few things you need to concentrate on: the journals they are publishing in, and how frequently are they publishing. Also, make sure you’re only looking at those publications where the potential mentor is the last author (that means that the majority of the research done for that publication was likely performed in that lab). I, personally, wouldn’t join a lab that didn’t publish at least 2 papers in medium-impact journals (4-8) per year. However, you’ll find some labs that like to, as some people call it, wait for the home run. These labs don’t publish frequently, but will produce a Nature article every 2 to 3 years. Personally, I would rather join a lab that publishes more frequently. Knowing that my work is going to be published soon helps keep me focused and motivated.

Subjective Criteria

After removing the labs that have not been publishing well from my list, I was left with about 5 potential labs. From here, I spoke to older graduate students about these labs and removed the one or two wackos from the list. This left me with just the right number of labs that I could rotate in.

During the rotation, this is when you should use more subjective criteria to choose your final lab. You’ll definitely notice how well you fit in the lab, how friendly the other people are, and how your relationship with your mentor will be. Most importantly, you’ll learn how well you’ll be trained in the lab. These types of things vary from person-to-person, but here’s some general advice. Don’t join a lab that makes you miserable. Don’t join a lab where no one will help you. And don’t join a lab if you can’t meet with the boss regularly. I’m sure I could come up with a lot more reasons why not to join a lab, but I think you could figure it out. I really think that the quality of training you’ll receive is the most important thing during graduate school. It’s difficult to determine how well you’ll be trained during your rotation, however, if there is no one around, or willing, to help you, then you probably won’t be trained very well in this lab.

So, after the rotations, I had a good idea about the best lab for me and I joined it. Of course, I’ve left out a lot of details, so if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

To all first-year grad students, I hope you all find the perfect lab. Please be sure to let me know, so I can try and get a post-doc position there ;) .