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[o_rats]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering what I should be doing as an undergraduate that will make my transition into a PhD program smoother?  Are there certain expectations for someone who is trying to enroll in a PhD program after graduating with an undergraduate degree or shortly after?  I want to go into microbiology.  At this point I'm not really sure what my research interests are or what direction I want to go with the degree once I get it.  Does anyone have any suggestion on where to gather experiences that might make me more appealing to the graduate school admissions committee (in general) as well as give me an insight on what direction I want to go?

Thanks

[polly_mer]

1) You want to do undergraduate research, not just a bottlewasher, but something that is somewhat your project.  This project may or may not relate in any way to your graduate research, but doing so both bulks up your CV and lets you find out if research is for you.

2) You want to present that research at a poster session attended by someone other than your fellow undergraduates in the department.  Go to a national conference and talk to people.  Be sure to go to a range of sessions.

3) Fix your writing skills; that's not a knock against your posts, but rather generic advice I give everyone since no one has good enough writing skills at the end of a BS.  You may not get anything published as an undergraduate (perfectly ok), but you can take extra writing classes that will help you structure arguments and a logical case.  Take both science writing classes and humanities-type writing classes.  Most scientists will be better writers for doing both because people become good writers by practicing while finding a style that works for them.

[offthemarket]

Find a microbiologist and join this person's lab as an undergraduate researcher. Get some serious research experience, publish a couple papers as co-author.

[pathogen]

1) do undergraduate research
2) If said research is done in a paying position, put away every penny you can.

[hmaria1609]

Do an internship before you graduate.  I did cooperative ed. as an undergrad, doing internships in the summers and one for the spring semester during my senior year. (I got academic credit for the last one) You may or may not get paid but it's something to have on your official transcript.

[sagit]

Try to get research experience both at your school and away from your school in a summer internship program.  You'll be more well rounded in your research skills and have a broader range of references to draw on for graduate applications.  I assume that like other areas of science there are summer internship programs in microbiology funded by the NSF (Research Experience for Undergraduates programs).  Wow, this one looks pretty cool: http://microbiologyreu-ret.vbi.vt.edu/
Deadlines for these programs are probably this month.

I should add that I did two REUs as an undergraduate and they were extremely useful toward improving my understanding of my scientific field.  Got my first publication from the first one.  That's still my most cited paper I think. 

[mystictechgal]

I'm not quite at this point, yet, I think, but boy am I grateful to the OP for posing the question. I've bookmarked the thread, but am posting so I have another way to find it if I lose my bookmarks. Thanks, OP! And, thanks to the forumites who have taken the time to answer.

[genius_at_large]

Read. Seriously. Don't just do reading required for coursework. Anybody can do that. Follow pertinent journals in your field. Don't assume that everything you will need to know will be presented in the classroom. Don't just learn stuff. Learn to be a lifelong learner.

[wet_blanket]

Go do something else for a year or five.  Your goal is to amass either (or both, but that's difficult) as many diverse experiences or as much money as you possibly can.  This won't strengthen your application (see the other advice on this thread for that) but it will put you in a better place when you start. 

You will need to make the effort to keep in touch with your profs (for letters) and your field's development if you do this.

[oldadjunct]

I am sure that there are exceptions to the following, but some of the unhappiest people I ever met went directly from undergrad to Ph.D. programs.  They became institutionalized and unable to imagine themselves in any other  environment even once they were manifestly unhappy.

FWIW, I think it a huge mistake to go directly from undergrad to a grad program.  For no other reason, prove to yourself that in addition to being a very good student you are also a very good ........

BTW, I say the same to my children, two of whom are more than a bit academically inclined.

[sagit]

Go do something else for a year or five.  Your goal is to amass either (or both, but that's difficult) as many diverse experiences or as much money as you possibly can.  This won't strengthen your application (see the other advice on this thread for that) but it will put you in a better place when you start. 

You will need to make the effort to keep in touch with your profs (for letters) and your field's development if you do this.

Five years seems like a long time between undergrad and grad school for science.  Maybe if you are working as a lab tech or something similar in your field.  But otherwise, maybe 1-2 years would be sufficient.

[wet_blanket]

Go do something else for a year or five.  Your goal is to amass either (or both, but that's difficult) as many diverse experiences or as much money as you possibly can.  This won't strengthen your application (see the other advice on this thread for that) but it will put you in a better place when you start. 

You will need to make the effort to keep in touch with your profs (for letters) and your field's development if you do this.

Five years seems like a long time between undergrad and grad school for science.  Maybe if you are working as a lab tech or something similar in your field.  But otherwise, maybe 1-2 years would be sufficient.

A long time relative to the norm, maybe.  An actually long time?  I don't think so.  Assuming that one of the post-PhD options on the table is academia, a five year break means that by the time OP reaches retirement, s/he might have spent as many as 9 years of his/her life without a significant relationship with an institution of education.

I know plenty of people who went straight through and are perfectly happy.  But it's a big old world out there it's worth making an effort to experience it.

[polly_mer]

What you do with the break matters.  A few years in the field doing something interesting (or so dirt dull that you need to go to a more stimulating environment after paying your dues) can be an asset.  A few years doing something else interesting (peace corps, teaching 7-12, raising kids) to give you another dimension can be an asset.

A few years spent in a crappy job flipping burgers and then going to graduate school out of desperation is a bad, bad plan.

I technically went straight through, but

1) I did an undergraduate research project in a field separate from my major,
2) my master's work was completely different from either my undergraduate or undergraduate research,
3) my postmaster's fellowship built on my master's work but was a different technique,
4) my first shot at a doctorate was related to my postmaster's fellowship, but in a different problem with classes that were very different from my master's work, and
5) my second shot at a doctorate was using the techniques of the first shot, but to a very different problem.

That kind of background gave me a good foundation for choosing things outside of academia since I kept working with mentors who were outside of academia.  Also, in many STEM fields, the training obtained through research transfers nicely to non-academic pursuits, unlike humanities fields.

Do get a variety of experiences outside the classroom, OP, but don't feel that those experiences must be X, Y, and Z or they don't count.

[sagit]

What you do with the break matters. 

This.  I have to think that for many fields (especially science, perhaps?) it will be more difficult to get into  a good graduate school (or succeed once you are there) if you let the skills you learned as an undergraduate atrophy.   

[wet_blanket]

I want to put the part of Polly's post sagit quoted

What you do with the break matters. 

This.  I have to think that for many fields (especially science, perhaps?) it will be more difficult to get into  a good graduate school (or succeed once you are there) if you let the skills you learned as an undergraduate atrophy.   

alongside this part

 
Do get a variety of experiences outside the classroom, OP, but don't feel that those experiences must be X, Y, and Z or they don't count.

Thinking back to my undergrad science degree, it's not my skills that have atrophied so much as my factual memory and the currency of my knowledge of what's happening in the field.  I'm confident my now-firmly-a-social-scientist self could still run a gel or a PCR or whatever.  And if I'd kept up with developments in the field, I would probably have retained the basic facts I've lost.

The purpose of going and doing something isn't to make someone more admissable to grad school - some people need to do this too, but it's a separate endeavor.  It's so the prospective grad student is better informed about what the world offers.  How many of the umpteen gazillion things a person can do with their life has the average 22 year old even heard of? Getting a PhD  is a great idea (I'm doing one right now), but doing it straight away seems to me a bit like ordering off a menu without going past the first page.