Why are you here?

My grad school department did not have many upper level lab courses (or many lab courses in general) for pre-med undergraduates to get their lab requirements in for med school admissions. On top of that, working on an independent project or having a faculty with whom you work can help get into med school (or any post-bachelor's program, but my school had a LOT of pre-med students).

In grad school I directly trained 3 undergrads, two of whom wanted to go to med school, the other went to grad school. Since starting my post-doc I have worked with one undergrad who wants to go to med school, a recent grad who got into one med school where he did not want to go (WHY APPLY THERE?!) so he's killing time for a year and re-applying, and one first-year grad student.

Three of the four pre-meds with whom I have worked are clearly not mentally present when they are in lab. They are distracted by their cell phones (while others may use them but are not distracted), come in late, do not seem to learn how to trouble shoot after weeks or months of me asking leading questions and giving suggestions, make excuses, and are excessively "apologetic" and "appreciative" (which I attribute to not feeling or being a member of a research team).

When my undergrad was apologetic after being late A LOT this past semester, I finally stopped him and laid it on the line. I actually told him that he needs to be respectful of my time. I told him that while I understand that working in a lab and doing a senior project will help students get into medical school, if that is the only reason he is in lab he is wasting my time. I told him I want him to feel like the project is his and to own it. Was I too blunt?

I am almost to the same point with the recent grad who is killing a year to reapply to med school. I am supposed to be helping him with a technique, but I am not directly supervising his project (the P.I. and lab manager are). As a result, I do not feel that I need to manage his time or progress. So when something did not work last week and he told me he would be out on Friday, I pointed out that he cannot knowingly continue with something that is unlikely to work or provide any answer just because he will be out on Friday and wants something to show for his time. If it was something on my project, I might have told him to start over and I would finish what he did not get to. (Luckily my rotating grad student is performing the same technique successfully for my project; I just cannot figure out what they are doing differently aside from caring.) Today I stuck around for a tenth hour in lab so I could be there when he made a decision to continue or not at the same point in the experiment that we had the conversation last week.

Anyway, the whole point of my rambling is that when I have my own lab I will attempt to figure out why a prospective student wants to be in the lab. If they tell me it is because they think my research topic is "interesting", they will not be invited to join. I find people who say things are "interesting" are not truly interested in those things. Many med students have a familial connection to a disease that truly does drive them to go to med school. While this makes for generic grad school essays, it is a MUCH better reason to do research than just to get into med school. If they tell me they are trying to make their med school application stronger and would really like the opportunity to work on a research project, I would likely have them join the lab because we would at least have a mutual understanding of expectations!

How I distinguish between prospective students being well prepared for the question and truly having an interest in my research, however, is going to be a learned skill.

Oh, yes. The fourth pre-med who was amazing? Well, after high school, she immigrated to the U.S. from a third world country, learned English, got an associates degree, transferred to a private liberal arts school, and paid her own way through all that. I think she had more life experience and appreciation for her hard work than the other three.