As a follow-up to our tips regarding what NOT to do when picking a grad school lab, here, based on our own experiences, we present 5 critical things to do when considering what school and lab to join for your graduate studies and research:

DO…

1.  Talk to the students and postdocs during your visit.  A lot.

You want a dose of reality for what a lab is really like?  Just talk to the people who work there.  During your visit, professors and graduate staff will say whatever is necessary to get you to join their lab.  Graduate students and postdocs are under no such obligation, and, in our experience, are brutally honest about

Labguru recently wrote about strategic tips for thesis preparation, as spring is historically a time when labs graduate a lot of students.  But just as surely as current students leave, new students join, with April and May constituting the vast majority of organized graduate school visit weekends.  A visit weekend is a chance to get an up-close look at university programs, advisors you’ve wanted to work with, and to test chemistry with potential labmates.  Nothing can equal an opportunity to spend some time visiting schools you want to attend for graduate school, but it’s not enough to just visit.  We at Labguru want to offer additional advice to consider before, during and after your trips to make what could be the most important decision of your career in science – where you get your PhD – a little bit easier.

Ask the average person what they think about science and scientists, and you’re likely to get a range of responses.  Whether because of the portrayal (often translating to stereotyping) of scientists in popular media, the general mystique and mystery associated with what they do, and a general reverence for their brilliance, people carry many misconceptions and misunderstandings about what scientists are really like.  In our latest blog post, Labguru dispels our top five:

When it comes to listing the dreadful tasks on a PhD’s to-do list, writing a dissertation is always ranked among the top ones. And for a good reason. This document needs to cover all the ground you have covered while working hard on the bench, including thorough discussion, detailed methodologies and an illustrated results section that will make your 5-years’ work worthy of the Doctor of Philosophy title stuck right after your surname. And worse, you need to write it all by yourself. So, how does one approach and prepare a document that summarizes 5 years of hard work?

There are a handful of procedures which almost all life science researchers encounter at a certain point along their work. These common techniques can be difficult to troubleshoot and in many cases lead  to the stall of research progression. Since some of these techniques serve as the basis for future experimentation, many employers (in academia as well as industry) expect their candidates to be proficient and master them well. While there are many basic molecular biology techniques, we’ll discuss the five most common techniques:

1. PCR
Without doubt the most widely used technique in life science research. Since its invention in the early 80s, PCR has profoundly reshaped and advanced molecular biology techniques. Advanced techniques of PCR, such as reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR) and qualitative PCR (qPCR) have pushed forward the analysis of gene expression across different samples and today are common tools in molecular biology research labs.