I made an EA-inspired career change into biomedical engineering and am midway through an MS, so I feel I can speak to some of this.
This lab was a bit less exciting to me but the supervisor was more hands-off in terms of projects, giving their students freedom to develop their own projects (within reason), which might mean that I could develop a more optimal project than the other one I was offered. However, the projects seemed more about discovery rather than application, which makes me uncertain about how interesting/beneficial it could be, although they do use a range of highly-transferable techniques.
Speaking for myself, having freedom to develop my own project would have been suboptimal. One of the biggest values of grad school is absorbing the strategic knowledge of an experienced supervisor. The most capable people in our prestigious lab defer heavily to the PI. Not all PIs are worth deferring to. You should seek a lab run by a PI whose judgment in project selection motivates you the most.
How important is making the right choice, really? Is it more important to just find a project that interests me, and hope I can transfer my skills anyway?
It’s important to choose a lab where you won’t find your growth bottlenecked by something pointless. You want the limiting factor to be your own skills, time, and energy. Here are some things I would make sure you’ll have:
A capable mentor figure, either the PI or a strong PhD student/postdoc
A project that will hold your interest for a couple years
Enough money that you won’t be wasting a lot of time economizing
Colleagues who respect you and the lab (no matter how sarcastic they might be in conversation)
On that point, is my choice likely to cut off other options and pathways?
It won’t cut off many options and pathways, although one thing I can think of is that, as an MS student, you’re unlikely to be competitive for the NSF GRFP (PIs steer their PhDs toward that), and you won’t be eligible for it after doing the MS.
What it will do is give you a comparative advantage that will exert a strong pull in a certain direction. You’ll use your experience to get a PhD position or your first industry job, and that will tend to give you more forms of related experience, funneling you into a niche.
You can fight against that to some extent, but it takes effort and you will not have perfect control. After your MS, you’ll be in debt, 2 years older, and feeling pressure to find your next step. You’ll have less slack than you do right now, but more doors will be open to you.
Should I aim for a lab that isn’t as directly interesting to me but might allow me greater freedom to design an optimal project?
No, I think you should aim for a lab that will give you heavy guidance in constructing your project. Good strategic and technical mentorship is invaluable. When the lab constrains your project, it’s a sign they have a focused research agenda that your work fits into. That means your work will enhance somebody else’s. Everybody is therefore motivated to help each other. This is good for research.
Choosing your own project that doesn’t fit with everybody else’s means that nobody’s directly incentivized to help you. You miss out on a HUGE amount if you wind up in this position. Ideally, there should be a specific person in your lab you can name whose own research will be drastically accelerated by your own project (which is something you’ll only figure out after you join the lab).
Is it worth going for a project that is less interesting but will make me more employable/broaden my options?
I think it’s very good to choose projects that give you at least 1 marketable skill so you can get your foot in the door somewhere after you graduate. That’s something you can discuss with the PI. But don’t trade off too much motivation for marketability. If you’re choosing between a fascinating project that uses only skills with no market value, vs. a fairly interesting project that will also teach you the skills to get your first postgraduate job, probably go with the second one. It’s only 2 years.
Hi there, thank you so much for the fantastic, detailed reply, I appreciate the effort.
It’s really good to hear your perspective on being able to choose my own project, as that’s something I’m concerned about too. The second supervisor did mention that that is a challenging thing for students to manage, and so I am more drawn to being able to complete a pre-designed and well-constructed research project than trying to pull one together on my own.
I just realized that I completely neglected to mention in my original post that I am from Australia, which is a pretty major detail but only really means that that advice about the NSF GRFP doesn’t apply. Given that I (hopefully) won’t be in as much debt completing my MS in Australia rather than the US, I hope that that might give me a bit more “slack” as you say. Nevertheless, I understand what you’re saying about being “pulled” in a certain direction and that’s something I’ll take care to be aware of.
The advice about making sure my work is directly helping someone else’s is excellent, and I know for sure that that will be the case for the first lab, as the supervisor clearly explained how the research is contributing to the lab’s agenda, and there is a postdoc in the lab that has similar research so will be apparently guiding me throughout.
On the last point, I might try to recontact the first supervisor to get a general idea of what techniques they use in their lab and that I would be using, to try to gauge how marketable my time in the lab would make me.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and useful reply!
Absolutely! It sounds like your were intuitively being pulled in this direction anyway, so it sounds like you have good judgment and that will take you far. Best of luck.
I made an EA-inspired career change into biomedical engineering and am midway through an MS, so I feel I can speak to some of this.
Speaking for myself, having freedom to develop my own project would have been suboptimal. One of the biggest values of grad school is absorbing the strategic knowledge of an experienced supervisor. The most capable people in our prestigious lab defer heavily to the PI. Not all PIs are worth deferring to. You should seek a lab run by a PI whose judgment in project selection motivates you the most.
It’s important to choose a lab where you won’t find your growth bottlenecked by something pointless. You want the limiting factor to be your own skills, time, and energy. Here are some things I would make sure you’ll have:
A capable mentor figure, either the PI or a strong PhD student/postdoc
A project that will hold your interest for a couple years
Enough money that you won’t be wasting a lot of time economizing
Colleagues who respect you and the lab (no matter how sarcastic they might be in conversation)
It won’t cut off many options and pathways, although one thing I can think of is that, as an MS student, you’re unlikely to be competitive for the NSF GRFP (PIs steer their PhDs toward that), and you won’t be eligible for it after doing the MS.
What it will do is give you a comparative advantage that will exert a strong pull in a certain direction. You’ll use your experience to get a PhD position or your first industry job, and that will tend to give you more forms of related experience, funneling you into a niche.
You can fight against that to some extent, but it takes effort and you will not have perfect control. After your MS, you’ll be in debt, 2 years older, and feeling pressure to find your next step. You’ll have less slack than you do right now, but more doors will be open to you.
No, I think you should aim for a lab that will give you heavy guidance in constructing your project. Good strategic and technical mentorship is invaluable. When the lab constrains your project, it’s a sign they have a focused research agenda that your work fits into. That means your work will enhance somebody else’s. Everybody is therefore motivated to help each other. This is good for research.
Choosing your own project that doesn’t fit with everybody else’s means that nobody’s directly incentivized to help you. You miss out on a HUGE amount if you wind up in this position. Ideally, there should be a specific person in your lab you can name whose own research will be drastically accelerated by your own project (which is something you’ll only figure out after you join the lab).
I think it’s very good to choose projects that give you at least 1 marketable skill so you can get your foot in the door somewhere after you graduate. That’s something you can discuss with the PI. But don’t trade off too much motivation for marketability. If you’re choosing between a fascinating project that uses only skills with no market value, vs. a fairly interesting project that will also teach you the skills to get your first postgraduate job, probably go with the second one. It’s only 2 years.
Hi there, thank you so much for the fantastic, detailed reply, I appreciate the effort.
It’s really good to hear your perspective on being able to choose my own project, as that’s something I’m concerned about too. The second supervisor did mention that that is a challenging thing for students to manage, and so I am more drawn to being able to complete a pre-designed and well-constructed research project than trying to pull one together on my own.
I just realized that I completely neglected to mention in my original post that I am from Australia, which is a pretty major detail but only really means that that advice about the NSF GRFP doesn’t apply. Given that I (hopefully) won’t be in as much debt completing my MS in Australia rather than the US, I hope that that might give me a bit more “slack” as you say. Nevertheless, I understand what you’re saying about being “pulled” in a certain direction and that’s something I’ll take care to be aware of.
The advice about making sure my work is directly helping someone else’s is excellent, and I know for sure that that will be the case for the first lab, as the supervisor clearly explained how the research is contributing to the lab’s agenda, and there is a postdoc in the lab that has similar research so will be apparently guiding me throughout.
On the last point, I might try to recontact the first supervisor to get a general idea of what techniques they use in their lab and that I would be using, to try to gauge how marketable my time in the lab would make me.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and useful reply!
Absolutely! It sounds like your were intuitively being pulled in this direction anyway, so it sounds like you have good judgment and that will take you far. Best of luck.