Terrible Predicament with research, need help

[parsimony1428]

I'm going to be applying MD/PhD and I am worried about having a poor research essay for my application. I started in a lab freshman year and research has been extremely lagged. I have no publishable results and the amount of progress has been slow due to the nature of the work (crystallography and structure of proteins). My PI is now moving labs and my choices are to move with the postdoc I train under to a new lab entirely on different research, or to stay with a graduate student in the temporary lab space that's staying around for a year. The grad student doesnt work on my project but is pretty good at giving advice and has helped me on my project before.

I just feel like I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to md/phd applications because I dont have a single cohesive research story since I basically started one project and now it abruptly stops without closure due to this lab moving and then I have to restart something else. What should I do?? Please help!

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[Neuronix]

You're an undergrad. You make the best of your situation and move on. Get some more experience however seems best to you. Nobody expects you to have some grand cohesive research story as an undergrad. That's a PhD thesis.

Now you understand why it was generally not recommended that MD/PhD students take on x-ray crystallography projects

You also now understand the importance of joining a lab that won't move half way through your PhD thesis.

Be happy these things are happening to you now. This is not going to hurt you like it would as a graduate student.

 

[parsimony1428]

You're an undergrad. You make the best of your situation and move on. Get some more experience however seems best to you. Nobody expects you to have some grand cohesive research story as an undergrad. That's a PhD thesis.

Now you understand why it was generally not recommended that MD/PhD students take on x-ray crystallography projects

You also now understand the importance of joining a lab that won't move half way through your PhD thesis.

Be happy these things are happening to you now. This is not going to hurt you like it would as a graduate student.

How would I tactfully explain the situation without putting myself at a disadvantage when it comes to applications?

Yes, I wish I had known that this isn't an applicable field for MD/PhD's, I was naive when I joined the lab freshman year and just took what I got.

I dont see, however, how the fact that this lab moved is anything I could have forseen, but yes it's obviously important that a lab stays.

 

[Neuronix]

You missed my point.

This is not a problem. I don't understand your concern.

 

[parsimony1428]

You missed my point.

This is not a problem. I don't understand your concern.

I apologize. So you're saying it's not something I need to bother justifying since no one expects me to have a complete story like a PhD would. Would I just talk about my first project, explain the lab moved, and then talk about my second for the research essay?

 

[Neuronix]

Correct.

 

[StilgarMD]

I apologize. So you're saying it's not something I need to bother justifying since no one expects me to have a complete story like a PhD would. Would I just talk about my first project, explain the lab moved, and then talk about my second for the research essay?

I barely got my experiment to work and I got into good programs. Having a strong MCAT score and GPA didn't hurt. as long as you can show you're critically thinking about your work on the interview trail, and how that experience translates to you being willing to bare hardship in a PhD program, I think it won't hurt you.

 

[Shifty B]

Agreed. This is not an issue.

The most important thing is that you know how to explain each project you worked on and what your role in it was. It really doesn't matter if it was 3 or 5 different projects, as long as you got some notion of the big picture and knew what you were doing, the outcome of the project doesn't really affect you. Papers/posters are a bonus only, not required.

 

[s_med]

To jump in here: I had a very successful MD/PhD admissions cycle with 2 first-author pubs, but in multiple secondaries I wrote about a project that failed due to lagged results, poor communication, people moving away, inconsistent contributions from team members, etc. Adcoms certainly cared about my publications, but this story about failure ultimately got more airtime throughout the admissions cycle. I was asked about it at nearly every interview and some even commented about the maturity of my perspective and how it is great to have the experience of failure in research before beginning a PhD, since it is an inevitable part of the process.

Granted, I had the freedom to write about this because my 2 pubs speak for themselves -- if I had not had them, it might have seemed that I was trying to justify my lack of "research productivity," which as mentioned is totally unnecessary since nobody expects you to publish as an undergrad. But I am sure that you learned from your experience, and if you are able to appropriately translate that into a well-written section of an essay, or a polished talking point at interviews, I believe it will serve you well. Some could even argue that your experience has prepared you for MD/PhD more than that of a "star" applicant with 5 pubs + presentations who has not truly faced the harsh realities of academic endeavor.

 

[Neuronix]

Op, I would not make your lab difficulties the focus of your story.

You worked in a few labs. Here's what they did. Here's what your interests are. Nobody expects you to have publications anyway, so don't dwell on it or make excuses for something you didn't need in the first place.