The
number and quality of faculty members conducting research
in your area of interest should be an essential factor
when evaluating Ph.D. programs in the biomedical sciences.
Target graduate programs with multiple faculty members
doing high-caliber research in your field. The reasons
for this are two-fold. First, faculty members with shared
interests often collaborate on biomedical research projects
and organize joint lab meetings or journal clubs. As
a graduate student, you benefit substantially from these
interactions. Second, when the time comes to select
a thesis advisor, you need to have several options in
case your first-choice mentor moves, loses funding,
stops taking students, retires, etcetera.
If
your research interests are very focused, you probably
know which faculty members have published high-impact
research on the topic. Alternatively, use PubMed
to generate a list of recent papers published in prominent
journals and concentrate on graduate programs at
the home institutions of the sponsoring authors (the
last author listed).
If
your research interests are more broad, talk to your
undergraduate advisor, department chair, or research
mentor to determine which institutions have strong graduate
programs in your field of interest. Generally speaking,
well-funded departments attract and retain strong research
faculty, so the lists of top-funded
departments may help you identify potential graduate
programs in the biomedical sciences.
If
you are not committed to a particular field of study,
you may benefit from the flexibility afforded by a multidisciplinary
graduate program. These “umbrella” programs
are becoming more common as the lines between traditional
disciplines blur. Participants of multidisciplinary
programs are generally not required to declare a departmental
affiliation when applying to graduate school, but instead
take a year of general coursework and rotate through
several laboratories before declaring a Ph.D. major
and advisor.
There
are two types of umbrella programs. Type 1:
an interdisciplinary program that includes some, but
not all, basic research departments; students can select
a mentor from some departments but not others. Type
2: an interdisciplinary program that includes
all basic research departments; students can
select a mentor from any of the basic biomedical
sciences research departments that offer a Ph.D. degree.
While the majority of the top-ranked
schools have at least one type of interdisciplinary
program (Type 1 or Type 2), the following top-ranked
schools offer all-inclusive (Type 2) umbrella programs
that give you the flexibility to select a mentor in
any Ph.D.-granting department:
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