added tips :) (I am a computational biologist & Data Scientist going for my second masters) - regarding learning how to code, asking Computer Science students and Data Science student for advice is a good move. There are plenty of professional and student communities in the CS field that provide courses and workshops at incredibly low prices. An added plus, you get a whole community of techies to ask for help when needed :)
@@carrellwashington4007 Computational Biology relies a lot on programming so going to the industry as a data scientist is not that hard. However I want to stay in academia as computational biology is what makes me happy. Search for communities around you. There are thousands of them, many associated to colleges. Reach out to CS students and data science students around you and ask them. Tech communities are common and welcoming and they will certainly help.
Hey Susana , nice to know that you are working on computational biology and data science. Even I am working on the same. I would like to know some of these communities that you mentioned that I can ask for help when I am stuck at my work. Could you please share your thoughts their details?
cmoul1 Bioninformatics is dedicated mainly to simple data analysis, focusing more on statistics. Computational biology works on mathematical modelling, often working alongside bench work and acting as the bridge between biology and data science. In simple terms, Bioinformatics focus on descriptive statistics and computational biology on inferential statistics
A big piece of advice I have is YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO STRAIGHT TO GRAD SCHOOL FROM UNDERGRAD. The amount of students I know who thought it looked bad to take a couple years off and ended up burning themselves out.
Jamie Hobbs-Mallyon Wish I had known this earlier. My senior year a professor highly encouraged and basically scared me (well I scared myself) into going straight or at least only ONE gap year. Spent a lot of money on GRE prep and all down the drain bc, guess what? After graduating I’m realizing I’m not exactly sure what type of program or even degree I want to go for!! So no GRE till I get a better footing on what I want in life AKA life experience!!
This is super true! I took 2 years off, thinking I was going to apply to medical school - but working as a lab tech gave me the time and experience to reflect on my real interests and led me to apply to a PhD program. I enjoyed working as a technician and it was nice to have some time in the "real world" before heading back to school
When you are going for recruitment events, choose schools where both younger and older students participate in the social parts. If no student past second year is there to hang out - it’s a red flag
Still on the fence about going for my PhD in neuroscience. I'm currently a senior in undergrad and am still accepting that graduate school is not happening for me, next year at least. It's very hard because so many friends are applying and I feel so behind. Videos like this make me really want to pursue my PhD!
I absolutely agree with your coding advice. Not only have I found it immensely valuable in my own PhD, but it has opened up opportunities and jobs that I hadn't previously considered. Every PhD that gathers quantitative data needs some sort of coding expertise, which can also make for a good "fall-back" job if things don't work out the way you had hoped.
Fantastic advices! My favorite is #3. I wish that during my PhD I expressed to my advisor the desire to go to conferences. I ended up presenting to my first conference during my postdoc: it was an amazing experience!
This gives me so much hope. I used to ask to go to conferences twice a year and i *still* haven't been to conference. My advisor is worried I'll be scooped but i also have little presentation experience.
Make sure you find and talk to former members of whatever lab / supervisor you are thinking of joining. This will save you from working in a hostile / toxic / dysfunctional lab as I had the great unpleasure of working in
You don't want to be like that doctor at the beginning, he's a total clown. And besides, PhDs are the real doctors. We just use it as an honorary title. Congratulations doc!
I feel like I wasted my time in Grad School. I didn’t make any lasting connections or get and internship. I mean I just graduated but I kind of feel like I didn’t accomplish anything. I feel so aimless now.
Great Advice. Every experience will be somewhat unique to the advisor you ultimately select. Usually most advisors have some "track record" of their habits and you can quickly uncover these by asking the current people in their lab. While people can change as their careers evolves, previous practices (mentorship philosophy, quality vs. quantity, # of conferences that students attend) are a good estimate of what you can expect. Never join a lab without talking to the people already there.
Very valuable advice. A few comments though: #1: Rephrase as: "Join a grad school or other structured program if you can with cohorts and such". In Germany, structured grad school programs were not the norm when I started in 2012 and are still not too common. At our university, they introduced them a year later and the students within this program graduate in about 4 years and the others in about 6-10 years. When your advisor is your employer and sole oversight at the same time, there is a collusion of interest: Either to squeeze as many papers out of the person as possible as long they just cost the low PhD salary or simply nobody who cares to correct your advisor's bad project management (aka the academic freedom to explore many dead ends). PRO tip: If all people working in a lab come from external places and no student who knows your professor from courses or lectures dares to join your lab: RUN! #2 Talking to your advisor certainly helps, but it can't conceal all differences that might arise. If your interest is to graduate asap, because you realized that you are in a toxic lab and there is nothing to win anymore by staying longer and your advisors interest is to find someone to finish the paper the Post-doc who dropped out of the lab due to mental health issues, then talking won't get you anywhere. (Side note: The duration of a PhD in our lab is 6-10 years, the last three Post-docs quit staying less than two years. So blocking graduation of the advanced PhD students is basically the only way how my advisor can keep his lab running) #3 If your advisor's credo is "I already have two Natures, so a Cell paper is the only thing I still want to achieve in life" then you are doomed to mutate into a data hoarder hoping to publish the very big thing sometime. Needless to say that we typically get scooped with smaller papers on many topics. Regarding the conferences: Since our university seeks to increase the visibility of women in STEM (Great!) there are plenty of travel grants you can get in no time without formal application if your are a female researcher. Thus my advisor only takes the female members of his lab to conferences to save money. A male colleague of mine once complained that a female PhD student will essentially present his project and my advisor replied: "Don't complain: You made the experiments and the nice poster, but her boobs and blond hair will attract the audience". Not the only openly sexist remark my advisor has made during the last years. BTW: The female presenter of the poster is an able scientist and herself felt queasy about presenting the work of somebody else as hers . Like me and the others, she is just stuck in a toxic lab. #4 Yes, yes, yes. Do it! My coding skills turned out to be my escape route and emergency exit from said lab. I already have a job lined up, when I am finally free end of this year! I do no longer care that I have no first authorship (because we hoarded the data for the big thing we never managed to publish) and will happily say "Farewell" to academia. I would have loved to stay, because I still feel inclined to address many research topics out of curiosity, but "data scientist" is also nice, even though I will no longer work to fight cancer but probably to increase profit. A word of warning though: Being advanced in coding means that your lab members will approach you with their data analysis problems. Especially because I have the feeling that we are all stuck in that toxic lab with the horrible advisor, I was a bit too lenient towards those requests over the last years. So keep an eye on how much your colleagues take advantage of your skills and what they can do to you to return the favor. If it gets grossly out of balance then also start to decline politely, even though you might feel bad because of letting your peers down, whose friendship you rely on to brave the next day in a toxic lab.
@@neurotransmissions Yeah, at least for me it was the wrong choice. I saw all those high impact papers in Nature, Science, EMBO... and thought that I would be at the right place to start an academic career - the lab of an respected scientist in the field who made great contributions to science. He warned me during the application that he runs a "high paced competitive lab", but I didn't realize that this translates to "many people get burned along the way" to build this publication record. On top of that we had a few scarce years with projects not going well and thus my PI also was under immense pressure himself to meet the expectations of at least one high impact paper a year. I always thought that once you secured tenure and have built a reputation you could slow down in academia, but at least my advisor was constantly eager to set the bar higher than before to secure more grants to publish more to secure more grants and so on. This pressure he was channeling towards his group. He also once bragged about his own work ethic: "When my daughter was born, I had this important Southern Blot to run as a Post-doc - that's the spirit I want to see". So according to him not even the birth of the own child should be more important than research in the lab. I could not disagree more and thus I am in the wrong lab.
currently a senior in undergrad and this video is so helpful! most definitely will use as a reference as I build out my Master’s program and beyond! thanks for making this video! 😁
I'm very glad I joined the work force instead of jumping straight into Grad school. I haven't pursued my PhD yet, but once I do I'll have a much better idea of what my career goals are.
Thank you for saying "more senior" and not "older". As a nontraditional student I notice this age-related language is used a lot! One TA was like, "how are your kids doing"? (my interns) and I was like, well the 55 year old, the 30-something veteran, and the 20-something are doing great!
I submit my dissertation in a week. I've watched several videos like this recently and, of course, discussed this with many graduates. We all have the same revelations...
Whenever possible, use R instead of excel for your stats. R packages are usually developped by professionals with peer review publications behind them, while excel is just sh*t and not even consistant between versions..
ludovica piccardi yes I prefer R over Python. And ppl think it has a steep learning curve. I don't think so. Coz I never learnt any programming language other than C++, and I hated Java and had never gotten to learning Python. So when I started my Masters in Machine Learning and Data Mining, I picked up first Matlab and then R. Python s more of a general purpose programming language whose limbs have been extended into data science/ ml by pandas, numpy, scikit-learn. Whereas R is a proper language of statisticians. And there are packages present in R which haven't been implemented in Python like bioconductor R package. And yes Excel falls way short of all this ;)
The idea that your adviser has a very different set of goals for what they want from you and the goals that you yourself as the student want to achieve was a really good point to make. My advisor made it clear to me that he likes to keep his students around because he wanted to get as much work out of them as he could wear. My goal was to get my degree in time. So I could start living my life and making a career for myself. Probably was stuck an extra year year-and-a-half in my graduate program because that's what he wanted. And when I think about it now, he was pretty much telling me there's no way you're going to get out of here early no matter how good you are no matter how many sleepless night. She's been in the lab and no matter what you do. When I think about it, it angers me, but I've decided to let go and pay it forward in the sense that I try to help my students to avoid such experiences in their own lives and their own graduate programs in the future.
I've noticed in you video about writing the dissertation that you looked quite good in something that should be simple but it's quite hard for me even in my second year. That is just sit down and focus
Could you speak about imposter syndrome? I want to apply to a neuroscience PhD at a top university but I have a psychology background in a UK equivalent to a community college degree. I have no experience in the lab or with coding. It would be nice to see how you overcame feelings of inadequacy, because I assume we all feel that way at points in our lives.
getting into a top school for you would be near impossible in your case, maybe volunteer at a lab part-time after couple years of work experience/GRE prep then maybe apply?
Community college degree is an associates degree, so what you would need to do, is apply to a university as a Transfer student, because you’d be entering as a Junior. It’s generally easier for transfer students to apply into universities than first year students. Submit your application and transcripts to the university of your choice and once accepted, finish your junior and senior year to graduate with your Bachelors Degree in Psychology. Once you obtain your bachelors degree, you may apply to the graduate school at your current university or apply to a different graduate school. in graduate school, you’re able to pursue your masters degree, and or PhD ~ Should take you about 2-6 years depending on your pace but it’s DEFINITELY possible, just takes time and dedication Good luck !
Okay thank you, but I provided a bad example. It works bit differently in the UK. I have a masters degree but I don’t have my postgraduate degree at a Russell group university but I hold a bachelors and masters. Russell group is basically 24 universities in the UK with better funded research and opportunities. I have seen people do a masters from a bachelors at non-Russell group to Russell group, but I have never seen it from a PhD; but I don’t know anyone who is doing a PhD really. I suppose it is what you do with your time, how good your PhD idea is and what experience you have. Thanks ✌🏽
@@nicoleok__ It is possible, but the learning curve is extremely steep! You may need to prove to advisors you're capable through additional research experience outside etc. You may even need to do a masters degree again, I know some who have done this as apart of their course on a 1+3. It also allows them to do rotations to chose the best lab/research project for them. Overall, it is not impossible but will be very difficult if applying for a DTP, you could always work in a lab to gain experience for a year or so first.
This is just exactly what I need. Thanks so much. The prospect going to grad school is really appealing to me. But I’m an introvert kind of person so I often avoid talking to people, unless it’s something really necessary. Consequently, my undergrad advisor and I weren’t on the same page and I feel quite lost in the process of applying to things like internships, scholarships, etc. I’m also thinking about learning how to code, but I’m not a computer person. Your video has encouraged me to start learning how to code.Thanks so much once again. God bless you.
Congratulations, Doctor! Your advice is excellent and on point. I wish I had such advice before I started grad school. Your video does make me appreciate my own advisor, who sent us to conferences and pushed for publications. I’m disappointed that all advisors don’t do that.
I love your videos, these are so interesting to look into lives of a researcher. These are surely no less than pop science videos, more simple and direct insight in a researcher's life. They inspire me a lot when I feel bored, when I feel demotivated. Your videos encourage me a lot to stand up and start again. Wish more people like you (particularly Mathematics and Physics Dept. ) makes these kind of videos more! Best wishes from India! 🤗😊Currently pursuing Masters in Mathematics. 😃
Same about coding here. I have always hated coding but after doing research at a big school, Baylor, I realized how important coding was especially for data analysis 🧐
Thank you so much for making this video! I'm considering international programs for engineering and this definitely put things into perspective for me.
This video just saved me. Thank you sm for looking out for us! I’m about to start my PhD program this Fall quarter and I really appreciate you sharing your experience w us 🙌🏼
Really awesome video. I am in a microbiology master program in Germany. Almost every single one of your advice resonates with me. Thanks for sharing with us :)
Hi Dr. Alie! Thank you for this video. I can relate more of your advice. I finished 2 years of Masters in the same lab and now on my 5th year in my PhD in Pharmacy major in Biomedical Science with a total of 7 years. I decided to quit last month for few important reasons which you mentioned in this video but now decided to continue for 6 months and see if I will still continue or not by April 2020. I hope to chat with you someday. I would love to share with you the details of my PhD journey and I would love to hear suggestions from you. You helped me so much. More power to you! 🙂💖
I totally agree with you. And thankful to LinkedIn I got contact with many people and get suggestions and guidance from them. And it benefitted me too. I am already into experiments. And also got opportunity for research internship at prestigious institution in India. I guess we should get opportunity to understand our area of interest as this is the most important thing a undergrad should get exposure to all fields. As everyone has interest but can lie to various fields to. A person should be particular of his/her interests. Thank you for this amazing information it helps people who are struggling to get in to admissions
Hmm...But I thought a lot of universities these days require that candidates publish at least one or two paper before graduation? Nevertheless, this video is really helpful. Especially on talking to advisors about expectations and networking with professionals outside of your lab.
Jason Leung I see...thanks for the info :) I was in medical science, so there was a lot of pressure on publishing beyond stipulations from the department.
@@catecheong4943 Yeah, journals in experimental science usually have higher turnover and people are expected to publish a lot more, I think partly because one paper can have many authors.
Congratulations on your PhD! And thank you for this very useful and very much needed video! I just found your channel and I'm HOOKED. I graduated from my BA in Psychology a year ago and Im looking into transitioning into either neuropsychology or neuroscience and your channel is so helpful ❤ would you be able to make more content about being an RA, working in a lab, and grad school?
This is really different from the Netherlands. You need to be first author of at least 4 papers to get your degree. And your funding only lasts for four years, so I heard there is a lot of pressure on the phd students. I’m in my master’s degree now, and I’m not sure if I want to go in academia. Btw, we do R in the master’s already! I’m surprised you didn’t have it as a requirement to access the program.
I would like to do little research projects on people (mostly kids) and I want to be a research scientist but idk what field I would be wanting to go into. I enjoy a lot of things! I wish I could just research different sciences without getting a million degrees. I'm a sophomore in college.
My grad school started pretty crappy for me. A bully Advisor and also A bully senior. However after 3 years things started looking much better and I initiated my own collaborations and jumped onto every opportunity to do new projects and results started coming. By the last year of my PhD I was up all nights many days in weeks getting results and being all excited about them.
I feel like choosing the right lab is impossible. There are so many labs withing institutions and no one will honestly tell an outsider that the work sucks.
Aloe! Great content and advice! Thanks for sharing. Could you go a little more in depth about why your advisor and you weren’t on the same track? Why did you chose her/him? What changed? I’m starting grad school next year.
Let me fangirl for a second, I'm a UCSD Triton too!! AAAND, I'm a Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience major!!! I'm an undergrad though, but I did NOT expect that my procrastination youtube search would lead me to a neuroscience grad Triton!!!
hey,i just graduated from high school and I kinda think to take cognitive science (bachelor degree) as a major,i still considering about it though,i wonder what my future plan is if I hold cognitive science as a degree,can u share your thoughts on that pls?and after I finish my bachelor on cognitive science can I continue my degree on neuroscience master i really need advice atm,thanks!
Congrats on your PhD! Just subbed! I want to become a researcher too in the future, but I want to work in the medical field too... Do you know M.Ds that work in both clinical and research fields?
Ok ok ill learn code im stunted bythe application of my math skills code will help a lot good job Dr. A (+5 to data anlization = level6 bounes abilities gotcha)
I'm curious if you would know how long you can be out of college after graduating with a bachelor's in biology and still get into graduate school? Some sources say it's 10 years while others claim it's never.
I am a electrical engineer and wishing to enrolled in a grad school. My Ielts score is poor (6.5). I have research experience though I don't have any papers (published). I like the field of control systems, embedded systems and telecommunications. Please give me some advice
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #1 НАЧАЛО ПУТЕШЕСТВИЯ [Новый сезон] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/380Q7gLWGvk/mqdefault.jpg)
Wait, we're _not_ supposed to let our jobs define our entire identities? Really wish I'd known that sooner...
Also congrats on the Dr.!
Congrats Dr. Alie! I’m a therapist in the middle of my psych PhD, and I’m loving this channel! Good work :)
Tell me should i choose Phd program or a position at r&d department of a big company
added tips :) (I am a computational biologist & Data Scientist going for my second masters) - regarding learning how to code, asking Computer Science students and Data Science student for advice is a good move. There are plenty of professional and student communities in the CS field that provide courses and workshops at incredibly low prices. An added plus, you get a whole community of techies to ask for help when needed :)
@@carrellwashington4007 Computational Biology relies a lot on programming so going to the industry as a data scientist is not that hard. However I want to stay in academia as computational biology is what makes me happy. Search for communities around you. There are thousands of them, many associated to colleges. Reach out to CS students and data science students around you and ask them. Tech communities are common and welcoming and they will certainly help.
@@insilicobiology Thanks Susana
@@insilicobiology Are there differences between Computational Biology and BioInformatics ?
Hey Susana , nice to know that you are working on computational biology and data science. Even I am working on the same. I would like to know some of these communities that you mentioned that I can ask for help when I am stuck at my work. Could you please share your thoughts their details?
cmoul1 Bioninformatics is dedicated mainly to simple data analysis, focusing more on statistics. Computational biology works on mathematical modelling, often working alongside bench work and acting as the bridge between biology and data science. In simple terms, Bioinformatics focus on descriptive statistics and computational biology on inferential statistics
A big piece of advice I have is YOU DO NOT NEED TO GO STRAIGHT TO GRAD SCHOOL FROM UNDERGRAD. The amount of students I know who thought it looked bad to take a couple years off and ended up burning themselves out.
Jamie Hobbs-Mallyon Wish I had known this earlier. My senior year a professor highly encouraged and basically scared me (well I scared myself) into going straight or at least only ONE gap year. Spent a lot of money on GRE prep and all down the drain bc, guess what? After graduating I’m realizing I’m not exactly sure what type of program or even degree I want to go for!! So no GRE till I get a better footing on what I want in life AKA life experience!!
@@LaurenRamz Yeah I see this a lot! So glad I had a professor and parents who emphasized to take at least 2 years off
Jamie Hobbs-Mallyon I’ll make sure to pass the knowledge along and save some people time, energy, and lots of money!
It's even better to take a few years off to get work experience.
This is super true! I took 2 years off, thinking I was going to apply to medical school - but working as a lab tech gave me the time and experience to reflect on my real interests and led me to apply to a PhD program. I enjoyed working as a technician and it was nice to have some time in the "real world" before heading back to school
When you are going for recruitment events, choose schools where both younger and older students participate in the social parts. If no student past second year is there to hang out - it’s a red flag
!!!!!
Excellent advice. Hits so close to home!! As a fourth year grad student, I cannot stress just how awesome and true this advice is!!
Congratulations on your PHD am going to start my PHD in Molecular Oncology this April and i really needed some advice for beginners.
That program sounds exciting! Best wishes to you.
@@joydubyadee thank you for your warm wishes.
Congrats on the PhD, Ali!!!
Also, this video turned out great! Good advice and you seem really comfortable talking about your experiences. 👍
Still on the fence about going for my PhD in neuroscience. I'm currently a senior in undergrad and am still accepting that graduate school is not happening for me, next year at least. It's very hard because so many friends are applying and I feel so behind. Videos like this make me really want to pursue my PhD!
I absolutely agree with your coding advice. Not only have I found it immensely valuable in my own PhD, but it has opened up opportunities and jobs that I hadn't previously considered. Every PhD that gathers quantitative data needs some sort of coding expertise, which can also make for a good "fall-back" job if things don't work out the way you had hoped.
Fantastic advices! My favorite is #3. I wish that during my PhD I expressed to my advisor the desire to go to conferences. I ended up presenting to my first conference during my postdoc: it was an amazing experience!
This gives me so much hope. I used to ask to go to conferences twice a year and i *still* haven't been to conference. My advisor is worried I'll be scooped but i also have little presentation experience.
Make sure you find and talk to former members of whatever lab / supervisor you are thinking of joining. This will save you from working in a hostile / toxic / dysfunctional lab as I had the great unpleasure of working in
You don't want to be like that doctor at the beginning, he's a total clown. And besides, PhDs are the real doctors. We just use it as an honorary title. Congratulations doc!
I love your channel title lol
Are you talking about the flow chart guy?
I just started my graduate school in physics and really I have to say that I needed this video!
Thanks!
I feel like I wasted my time in Grad School. I didn’t make any lasting connections or get and internship. I mean I just graduated but I kind of feel like I didn’t accomplish anything. I feel so aimless now.
im in grad school right now and i totally feel that
I feel your pain as well but can't cry over spilled milk. We can start doing something right from this moment. Good luck everyone!
Great Advice. Every experience will be somewhat unique to the advisor you ultimately select. Usually most advisors have some "track record" of their habits and you can quickly uncover these by asking the current people in their lab. While people can change as their careers evolves, previous practices (mentorship philosophy, quality vs. quantity, # of conferences that students attend) are a good estimate of what you can expect. Never join a lab without talking to the people already there.
Very valuable advice. A few comments though:
#1: Rephrase as: "Join a grad school or other structured program if you can with cohorts and such". In Germany, structured grad school programs were not the norm when I started in 2012 and are still not too common. At our university, they introduced them a year later and the students within this program graduate in about 4 years and the others in about 6-10 years. When your advisor is your employer and sole oversight at the same time, there is a collusion of interest: Either to squeeze as many papers out of the person as possible as long they just cost the low PhD salary or simply nobody who cares to correct your advisor's bad project management (aka the academic freedom to explore many dead ends). PRO tip: If all people working in a lab come from external places and no student who knows your professor from courses or lectures dares to join your lab: RUN!
#2 Talking to your advisor certainly helps, but it can't conceal all differences that might arise. If your interest is to graduate asap, because you realized that you are in a toxic lab and there is nothing to win anymore by staying longer and your advisors interest is to find someone to finish the paper the Post-doc who dropped out of the lab due to mental health issues, then talking won't get you anywhere. (Side note: The duration of a PhD in our lab is 6-10 years, the last three Post-docs quit staying less than two years. So blocking graduation of the advanced PhD students is basically the only way how my advisor can keep his lab running)
#3 If your advisor's credo is "I already have two Natures, so a Cell paper is the only thing I still want to achieve in life" then you are doomed to mutate into a data hoarder hoping to publish the very big thing sometime. Needless to say that we typically get scooped with smaller papers on many topics. Regarding the conferences: Since our university seeks to increase the visibility of women in STEM (Great!) there are plenty of travel grants you can get in no time without formal application if your are a female researcher. Thus my advisor only takes the female members of his lab to conferences to save money. A male colleague of mine once complained that a female PhD student will essentially present his project and my advisor replied: "Don't complain: You made the experiments and the nice poster, but her boobs and blond hair will attract the audience". Not the only openly sexist remark my advisor has made during the last years. BTW: The female presenter of the poster is an able scientist and herself felt queasy about presenting the work of somebody else as hers . Like me and the others, she is just stuck in a toxic lab.
#4 Yes, yes, yes. Do it! My coding skills turned out to be my escape route and emergency exit from said lab. I already have a job lined up, when I am finally free end of this year! I do no longer care that I have no first authorship (because we hoarded the data for the big thing we never managed to publish) and will happily say "Farewell" to academia. I would have loved to stay, because I still feel inclined to address many research topics out of curiosity, but "data scientist" is also nice, even though I will no longer work to fight cancer but probably to increase profit. A word of warning though: Being advanced in coding means that your lab members will approach you with their data analysis problems. Especially because I have the feeling that we are all stuck in that toxic lab with the horrible advisor, I was a bit too lenient towards those requests over the last years. So keep an eye on how much your colleagues take advantage of your skills and what they can do to you to return the favor. If it gets grossly out of balance then also start to decline politely, even though you might feel bad because of letting your peers down, whose friendship you rely on to brave the next day in a toxic lab.
Your lab and program sound horrible.
@@neurotransmissions Yeah, at least for me it was the wrong choice. I saw all those high impact papers in Nature, Science, EMBO... and thought that I would be at the right place to start an academic career - the lab of an respected scientist in the field who made great contributions to science. He warned me during the application that he runs a "high paced competitive lab", but I didn't realize that this translates to "many people get burned along the way" to build this publication record. On top of that we had a few scarce years with projects not going well and thus my PI also was under immense pressure himself to meet the expectations of at least one high impact paper a year. I always thought that once you secured tenure and have built a reputation you could slow down in academia, but at least my advisor was constantly eager to set the bar higher than before to secure more grants to publish more to secure more grants and so on. This pressure he was channeling towards his group. He also once bragged about his own work ethic: "When my daughter was born, I had this important Southern Blot to run as a Post-doc - that's the spirit I want to see". So according to him not even the birth of the own child should be more important than research in the lab. I could not disagree more and thus I am in the wrong lab.
currently a senior in undergrad and this video is so helpful! most definitely will use as a reference as I build out my Master’s program and beyond! thanks for making this video! 😁
I'm very glad I joined the work force instead of jumping straight into Grad school. I haven't pursued my PhD yet, but once I do I'll have a much better idea of what my career goals are.
I m a 1st year graduate student studying molecular biology. Thank you so much for the tips! Congrats Dr.Alie!
Rock on! Congrats again! Great advice for grad school people and in the business world. Thanks
Thank you for saying "more senior" and not "older". As a nontraditional student I notice this age-related language is used a lot! One TA was like, "how are your kids doing"? (my interns) and I was like, well the 55 year old, the 30-something veteran, and the 20-something are doing great!
I submit my dissertation in a week. I've watched several videos like this recently and, of course, discussed this with many graduates. We all have the same revelations...
4th year mechanical engineering PhD student here - this is great advice and I agree with all of it.
Whenever possible, use R instead of excel for your stats. R packages are usually developped by professionals with peer review publications behind them, while excel is just sh*t and not even consistant between versions..
Or Python through Numpy and Scipy.
@@NiHaoMike64 pandas is much better
R is best ♡♡♡
lol I'm glad my degree is biostatistics
ludovica piccardi yes I prefer R over Python. And ppl think it has a steep learning curve. I don't think so. Coz I never learnt any programming language other than C++, and I hated Java and had never gotten to learning Python. So when I started my Masters in Machine Learning and Data Mining, I picked up first Matlab and then R. Python s more of a general purpose programming language whose limbs have been extended into data science/ ml by pandas, numpy, scikit-learn. Whereas R is a proper language of statisticians. And there are packages present in R which haven't been implemented in Python like bioconductor R package. And yes Excel falls way short of all this ;)
The idea that your adviser has a very different set of goals for what they want from you and the goals that you yourself as the student want to achieve was a really good point to make. My advisor made it clear to me that he likes to keep his students around because he wanted to get as much work out of them as he could wear. My goal was to get my degree in time. So I could start living my life and making a career for myself. Probably was stuck an extra year year-and-a-half in my graduate program because that's what he wanted. And when I think about it now, he was pretty much telling me there's no way you're going to get out of here early no matter how good you are no matter how many sleepless night. She's been in the lab and no matter what you do. When I think about it, it angers me, but I've decided to let go and pay it forward in the sense that I try to help my students to avoid such experiences in their own lives and their own graduate programs in the future.
I've noticed in you video about writing the dissertation that you looked quite good in something that should be simple but it's quite hard for me even in my second year. That is just sit down and focus
Could you speak about imposter syndrome? I want to apply to a neuroscience PhD at a top university but I have a psychology background in a UK equivalent to a community college degree. I have no experience in the lab or with coding. It would be nice to see how you overcame feelings of inadequacy, because I assume we all feel that way at points in our lives.
getting into a top school for you would be near impossible in your case, maybe volunteer at a lab part-time after couple years of work experience/GRE prep then maybe apply?
Community college degree is an associates degree, so what you would need to do, is apply to a university as a Transfer student, because you’d be entering as a Junior.
It’s generally easier for transfer students to apply into universities than first year students.
Submit your application and transcripts to the university of your choice and once accepted, finish your junior and senior year to graduate with your Bachelors Degree in Psychology.
Once you obtain your bachelors degree, you may apply to the graduate school at your current university or apply to a different graduate school.
in graduate school, you’re able to pursue your masters degree, and or PhD ~
Should take you about 2-6 years depending on your pace but it’s DEFINITELY possible, just takes time and dedication
Good luck !
Okay thank you, but I provided a bad example. It works bit differently in the UK. I have a masters degree but I don’t have my postgraduate degree at a Russell group university but I hold a bachelors and masters. Russell group is basically 24 universities in the UK with better funded research and opportunities.
I have seen people do a masters from a bachelors at non-Russell group to Russell group, but I have never seen it from a PhD; but I don’t know anyone who is doing a PhD really. I suppose it is what you do with your time, how good your PhD idea is and what experience you have.
Thanks ✌🏽
@@nicoleok__ It is possible, but the learning curve is extremely steep! You may need to prove to advisors you're capable through additional research experience outside etc. You may even need to do a masters degree again, I know some who have done this as apart of their course on a 1+3. It also allows them to do rotations to chose the best lab/research project for them. Overall, it is not impossible but will be very difficult if applying for a DTP, you could always work in a lab to gain experience for a year or so first.
Congratulations 🍾 this is pretty helpful as I’m applying to grad schools now wish me luck! 🍀
Hey Alie! It's so cool to hear these tips from your viewpoint. Thanks a lot!
So inspiring 💖 we need more scientific vlog like this 👍
This video exactly what i am looking for. Thanks for sharing.
This is just exactly what I need. Thanks so much. The prospect going to grad school is really appealing to me. But I’m an introvert kind of person so I often avoid talking to people, unless it’s something really necessary. Consequently, my undergrad advisor and I weren’t on the same page and I feel quite lost in the process of applying to things like internships, scholarships, etc. I’m also thinking about learning how to code, but I’m not a computer person. Your video has encouraged me to start learning how to code.Thanks so much once again. God bless you.
I'm masters student but most of the advices applies thanks
Congratulations, Doctor! Your advice is excellent and on point. I wish I had such advice before I started grad school. Your video does make me appreciate my own advisor, who sent us to conferences and pushed for publications. I’m disappointed that all advisors don’t do that.
Hi Dr... Congratulations again.. U looking fresh in this video, hope I get to this stage soon.. Still struggling with experiments
.
I love your videos, these are so interesting to look into lives of a researcher. These are surely no less than pop science videos, more simple and direct insight in a researcher's life. They inspire me a lot when I feel bored, when I feel demotivated. Your videos encourage me a lot to stand up and start again. Wish more people like you (particularly Mathematics and Physics Dept. ) makes these kind of videos more!
Best wishes from India! 🤗😊Currently pursuing Masters in Mathematics. 😃
omg you're awesome! so happy I came across your channel! thank you so much for the tips, i'm just starting my PhD! :)
Same about coding here. I have always hated coding but after doing research at a big school, Baylor, I realized how important coding was especially for data analysis 🧐
Great video! I’m a first year in college. This definitely helped me.
Such a great and informative video! Thank you for making this and I really enjoy your energy and concise advice!
Love this, I’m hoping to get into the neuroscience grad program I’m aiming for! Awesome work Dr!
Great advice. In summary, good communication is key to being a successful grad student.
Graduate history major here, I can relate to your experiences.
Thank you so much for making this video! I'm considering international programs for engineering and this definitely put things into perspective for me.
This video just saved me. Thank you sm for looking out for us!
I’m about to start my PhD program this Fall quarter and I really appreciate you sharing your experience w us 🙌🏼
Currently applying to grad school! Thank you for the advice
Hey Dina! Best of luck!
@@timmysamecphd I was accepted and starting in September! :D
Dina I awesome! Congrats!!
I just did a vid on some tips on being a successful grad student! Check it out if you get the chance!!!
Subscribed, thank you Dr. Alie.
Please do more videos!! I love these video!!
Not doing a PhD, but starting an optometry program next year! I still think it was good advice, thanks.
Great video! I can identify with a lot of this during my graduate school experience as well.
For data analysis, I use Stata. I like it a lot. :)
Thanks for your lovely advice!
UCSD - cured my cancer. 👌
Moores Cancer Center.
Beautiful campus..
UCSD, USD, and SDSU are beautiful campuses..
Congrats on your doctorate.
Really awesome video. I am in a microbiology master program in Germany. Almost every single one of your advice resonates with me. Thanks for sharing with us :)
Hi Dr. Alie! Thank you for this video. I can relate more of your advice. I finished 2 years of Masters in the same lab and now on my 5th year in my PhD in Pharmacy major in Biomedical Science with a total of 7 years. I decided to quit last month for few important reasons which you mentioned in this video but now decided to continue for 6 months and see if I will still continue or not by April 2020. I hope to chat with you someday. I would love to share with you the details of my PhD journey and I would love to hear suggestions from you. You helped me so much. More power to you! 🙂💖
Hi Doctor Alie... I hope be a Doctor soon also! ;-)
I totally agree with you. And thankful to LinkedIn I got contact with many people and get suggestions and guidance from them. And it benefitted me too. I am already into experiments. And also got opportunity for research internship at prestigious institution in India. I guess we should get opportunity to understand our area of interest as this is the most important thing a undergrad should get exposure to all fields. As everyone has interest but can lie to various fields to. A person should be particular of his/her interests. Thank you for this amazing information it helps people who are struggling to get in to admissions
Such good advice. I wish I would have known these as well. Especially managing expectations. Thanks for the video!
Congrats for your graduation 🥳🎊
dr. ASTROCYTE i love it!!!!!!! that's some REAL devotion
Hmm...But I thought a lot of universities these days require that candidates publish at least one or two paper before graduation? Nevertheless, this video is really helpful. Especially on talking to advisors about expectations and networking with professionals outside of your lab.
I didn't have anything published when I completed my PhD. It's quite normal for some fields like mathematics.
Jason Leung I see...thanks for the info :) I was in medical science, so there was a lot of pressure on publishing beyond stipulations from the department.
@@catecheong4943 Yeah, journals in experimental science usually have higher turnover and people are expected to publish a lot more, I think partly because one paper can have many authors.
Congratulations on your PhD! And thank you for this very useful and very much needed video! I just found your channel and I'm HOOKED. I graduated from my BA in Psychology a year ago and Im looking into transitioning into either neuropsychology or neuroscience and your channel is so helpful ❤ would you be able to make more content about being an RA, working in a lab, and grad school?
This is really different from the Netherlands. You need to be first author of at least 4 papers to get your degree. And your funding only lasts for four years, so I heard there is a lot of pressure on the phd students. I’m in my master’s degree now, and I’m not sure if I want to go in academia. Btw, we do R in the master’s already! I’m surprised you didn’t have it as a requirement to access the program.
You should learn new things and discover new interests and passions even in grad school.
I really loved it! I was wondering if you could make more of this kind of advice
I would like to do little research projects on people (mostly kids) and I want to be a research scientist but idk what field I would be wanting to go into. I enjoy a lot of things! I wish I could just research different sciences without getting a million degrees. I'm a sophomore in college.
Nice video! Your advice was really good
Thank you! That was very inspiring.
I have beginner coding experience as an undergrad. I've applied to grad school and im working on taking R/R studio workshops. thank you!!
Can I talk to you about submitting my grad application for neuroscience at UCSD?
Thank you for your advice!
My grad school started pretty crappy for me. A bully Advisor and also A bully senior. However after 3 years things started looking much better and I initiated my own collaborations and jumped onto every opportunity to do new projects and results started coming. By the last year of my PhD I was up all nights many days in weeks getting results and being all excited about them.
Btw. I was able to graduate before my bully senior.
I feel like choosing the right lab is impossible. There are so many labs withing institutions and no one will honestly tell an outsider that the work sucks.
Congratulations on your new qualification!
By your advisor, di you mean your (main) supervisor?
Aloe! Great content and advice! Thanks for sharing. Could you go a little more in depth about why your advisor and you weren’t on the same track? Why did you chose her/him? What changed? I’m starting grad school next year.
Let me fangirl for a second, I'm a UCSD Triton too!! AAAND, I'm a Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience major!!! I'm an undergrad though, but I did NOT expect that my procrastination youtube search would lead me to a neuroscience grad Triton!!!
hey,i just graduated from high school and I kinda think to take cognitive science (bachelor degree) as a major,i still considering about it though,i wonder what my future plan is if I hold cognitive science as a degree,can u share your thoughts on that pls?and after I finish my bachelor on cognitive science can I continue my degree on neuroscience master i really need advice atm,thanks!
How do you know that your advisors will value you as a person before you meet them?
Thank you very much
Congrats on your PhD! Just subbed!
I want to become a researcher too in the future, but I want to work in the medical field too... Do you know M.Ds that work in both clinical and research fields?
Alie can you please discuss the career options for a neuroscience PhD (if you haven’t already)
Hi! Thanks, in this moment it´s what i needed to hear, you helped me so much, by the way i also love astrocytes... Greetings from México! :D
Watching from London UK. 🇬🇧💗
Best advice I ever got: if you’re gonna get a PhD in economics, do it in 1964.
congrats! :D
Woah!! I like your tattoo!
Should i go for PhD or become a scientist of a R&D department of a big company like Lockheed Martin or something like that
Hi DR. I want to share with you the good water on earth
Ok ok ill learn code im stunted bythe application of my math skills code will help a lot
good job Dr. A
(+5 to data anlization = level6 bounes abilities gotcha)
Love her smile...
Can you do a video about neuroscience and long term tbis?
If you don't mind me asking, how important is having a resume source like linkedin for applying to grad school?
I’m about to go to UCSD
R > Python & Matlab
Extra tips for University College Sunny Dale: 1. Don't go out at night, 2. Never invite a stranger in after dark, 3. Avoid the military.
I'm curious if you would know how long you can be out of college after graduating with a bachelor's in biology and still get into graduate school? Some sources say it's 10 years while others claim it's never.
Idk if it's just me but part of this is super depressing
I am a electrical engineer and wishing to enrolled in a grad school. My Ielts score is poor (6.5). I have research experience though I don't have any papers (published). I like the field of control systems, embedded systems and telecommunications. Please give me some advice
Who else is actually a graduate student?
👀 me waiting for her to say something about cost mitigating methodologies...