Post date: Nov 15, 2015 5:4:33 PM
A recent summer student of mine asked for some advice on applying to grad school. Here's an edited version of my response:
First, think about the following questions:
What is your motivation for being a scientist? Is there a particular problem in the world that you want to help fix, and/or a particular area of human knowledge that you want to expand? What about science gets you excited?
What broad area of study interests you the most? Why?
What scientific questions interest you the most? Why?
What methodologies and/or organisms interest you the most? Why?
I recommend answering those questions in an essay that you write for yourself. It will give you some ideas of things to say when you contact professors, and can also serve as a rough draft of the personal statement that you write for your application.
Next, identify schools that have graduate programs in the broad area of study that interests you, that also have multiple professors in that graduate program who do research in a more specific area of study that interests you. There are several reasons to target schools with multiple professors in your area of interest:
In case something doesn’t work out with your thesis advisor (they have a medical emergency or don’t get tenure, or there is a personality conflict), you have other labs that you could switch into.
There are people who could potentially be on your thesis committee, who would have useful advice on your research.
If the graduate program does lab rotations in the first year, there are several labs in which you would like to rotate.
It is more likely that there will be courses in your specific area of interest.
The school is more likely to attract visitors in your specific area of interest.
For example, I knew that I was interested in genetics broadly, and ecological and population genetics specifically, so I ended up choosing UC Davis because it had a genetics program with multiple professors doing ecological or population genetics. I was able to take courses in very specific subjects of interest to me, for example there was a course in population genetic software.
If you are worried about being accepted, Peterson's Guide lists the acceptance rate for every program in the US, which can help you gauge your chances.
Next, contact the professors at those schools whose lab you might want to join. DON’T spam hundreds of professors with the same copied-and-pasted email; most professors in the US are overwhelmed with a huge number of emails from people looking for a graduate or postdoctoral advisor, and most of those emails are very generic and get deleted by the professor without reply. You will be applying to a few schools and contacting a few professors at each school, so maybe you will be contacting 10 or 20 professors total. For each professor you contact, spend some time reading their papers and learning about what they do. Then you want to send them an email explaining very specifically why their research interests you and what sort of research you might do in their lab if they took you on as student. Even make the subject line of the email specific to their/your interests so that they will notice it and be more likely to open it. Stay positive and upbeat in tone but not pushy. Attach a resume or CV so they can evaluate your qualifications.
Some professors might be interested in you, but might be near retirement or not have funding for a new graduate student. Still, if they are sufficiently impressed with your email they might forward it along to colleagues, or respond to you with advice.