Does your current physician scientist training continue your undergrad work?

[DendWrite]

I was curious how many of you had done research in undergrad and whether or not you chose that particular area to continue investigating for your PhD. Is it pretty common for people to stick with the same track throughout, or do some work at a couple labs during undergrad and then choose something entirely different for their PhD? Do programs want you to have a good idea of the focus you are going to choose when you apply, or did you find it was pretty flexible?

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[mdhouse]

I too am curious about this question, this relates to a question I had when you indicate areas of interest when selecting schools on the primary application: does a large amount of flexibility (choosing areas outside your research area/major) hurt you? conversely, would being too narrow in your selections hurt you?

 

[QofQuimica]

I'm sure some people do stay in the same field, but I wasn't one of them. My MS and PhD are in med chem and pharmaceutical chem, respectively. My UG research was in agricultural science, which has no relation to any research I have done since. On the bright side, that was the only project I was ever involved with where we could take our controls home and eat them....or would want to do so.

 

[ClarinetGeek]

I switched fields from virology to neuroscience. My virology work was all molecular/cellular biology and worked with mammalian cell lines. Now I work with a mouse model.

 

[URHere]

Developmental Psychology --> Genetics --> Neuroimmunology --> Computational Neuroscience --> Developmental Neuroscience --> Parasitology --> and I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in Synthetic Chemistry.

You can do whatever you want

 

[fMRI]

Hi

I'd say the majority of people does NOT stick with their undergraduate research, while they still have a pretty good idea what they want to research and which lab they would love to work with.

In other words: working in a lab as undergrad, people don't necessarily learn the "academics" but a few tricks of the trade, techniques and stuff about the everyday running of a lab. When it comes to designing one's own project and defining one's area of research later, this experiences comes in handy. My topic comes out of advanced coursework, not the lab jobs, but extensive lab experience definitively helped me to figure out the practical aspects.



URHere, I like your academic path -- I think I we should start a thread with this topic. ("How the heck did I end up what I am doing now?")