Too many different research experiences?

[isilya]

Hi everyone!

 

I'm a Linguistics/Cognitive Science double major in my final year at a large public research university and I'll be applying to programs in both departments + some psych departments. My main research interests are psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. I have a good GPA (3.75 overall, 4.00 and 3.85 in my majors) and acceptable GREs (161V/162Q/will find out AW in a few days), so I'm not worried about passing cutoffs.

 

However, I have research experience in a bunch of different labs throughout undergrad and I'm worried that it will look like I've just been bouncing around. I spent a bit over a year in an ERP sentence processing lab, have spent a year and a half so far in a psycholinguistics lab, and have spent about 9 months so far in a cognitive neuroscience lab (in a topic completely unrelated to language). I was also in a summer program this year doing computational modeling of pragmatics. Oh and I also did two summer internships in high school in addiction neurobiology labs. 

 

So my research experiences are pretty varied/all over the place, and I'm worried that it will look like I'm not devoted to any one thing, especially since I don't have any publications. Is this the case? If so, should I address it in my statement of purpose and how? 

 

Here's the list of schools I'm applying to for reference on where I'm aiming (mostly top programs). Am I aiming too high?

 

University of Rochester Brain & Cognitive Sciences
MIT Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Brown Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences
NYU Psychology
Stanford Psychology
UCLA Linguistics
UC Berkeley Linguistics
Penn Linguistics

[fuzzylogician]

So my research experiences are pretty varied/all over the place, and I'm worried that it will look like I'm not devoted to any one thing, especially since I don't have any publications. Is this the case? If so, should I address it in my statement of purpose and how? 

 

I don't think having too much experience is ever a problem. It's all about how you present it. Given your extensive background, you should be able to discuss how your experiences have helped you narrow down your research interests and how you are prepared to undertake whatever research topics you have in mind. If you present a coherent set of interests and relate them to your background, I doubt anyone will worry because you also spent a year in some other lab. It's not uncommon for undergrads and even graduate students in early years to take some time zero in on their interests and to dabble in several different subfields. I'd make sure to talk about the more relevant research experiences in more detail in your SOP and spend less time on the less relevant ones, since it does seem like you have a lot to say and it could get long, but I wouldn't worry about mentioning those other experiences in the SOP, as needed, and in your CV. 

 

As for your school selection, I only know the linguistics side so my advice can only be limited to those schools, but at least on the linguistics side, the schools you have chosen have widely different ideas about the right approach to language is. Maybe it doesn't matter for what you want to do, but I am certain that you will end up with completely (like, utterly and entirely) different projects if you study at MIT BCS as opposed to UCLA linguistics. I personally think MIT BCS is doing it all wrong and MIT linguistics is a much better place to be trained to study language, but I suppose that depends on the kinds of questions you want to ask.  Brown and Penn have strong theoretical linguistics, but Berkley and Rochester don't as much. You might want to also look into NYU linguistics, since they do have a strong neurolinguistics program alongside a very good theoretical program. UMass Amherst might also be an interesting place to explore, and also Maryland linguistics. I couldn't tell you if you're aiming too high -- my guess is that not -- but it really depends on how your research interests fit with the schools you listed, and since you didn't really tell us about your interests, it's hard to know. 

[Dedi]

Regarding the various research experience, I do not think it will be detrimental to your application. I'm in the same boat as you. Though my university doesn't technically have "labs" in the life sciences, I've had some varied independent research projects (that I've done beyond what was expected of me). What I've done in the SOP is made these different topics surround my current research interests.

No one is expected to know what they exactly want to do in the first or second year of university. Even then, who you work with as an undergrad depends on who is taking in students. As Fuzzy said, too much experience is never really a problem.

[isilya]

I don't think having too much experience is ever a problem. It's all about how you present it. Given your extensive background, you should be able to discuss how your experiences have helped you narrow down your research interests and how you are prepared to undertake whatever research topics you have in mind. If you present a coherent set of interests and relate them to your background, I doubt anyone will worry because you also spent a year in some other lab. It's not uncommon for undergrads and even graduate students in early years to take some time zero in on their interests and to dabble in several different subfields. I'd make sure to talk about the more relevant research experiences in more detail in your SOP and spend less time on the less relevant ones, since it does seem like you have a lot to say and it could get long, but I wouldn't worry about mentioning those other experiences in the SOP, as needed, and in your CV. 

 

As for your school selection, I only know the linguistics side so my advice can only be limited to those schools, but at least on the linguistics side, the schools you have chosen have widely different ideas about the right approach to language is. Maybe it doesn't matter for what you want to do, but I am certain that you will end up with completely (like, utterly and entirely) different projects if you study at MIT BCS as opposed to UCLA linguistics. I personally think MIT BCS is doing it all wrong and MIT linguistics is a much better place to be trained to study language, but I suppose that depends on the kinds of questions you want to ask.  Brown and Penn have strong theoretical linguistics, but Berkley and Rochester don't as much. You might want to also look into NYU linguistics, since they do have a strong neurolinguistics program alongside a very good theoretical program. UMass Amherst might also be an interesting place to explore, and also Maryland linguistics. I couldn't tell you if you're aiming too high -- my guess is that not -- but it really depends on how your research interests fit with the schools you listed, and since you didn't really tell us about your interests, it's hard to know. 

Thanks for the advice! I definitely am going to talk about what I want to work on in grad school, and it's very related to what I've been doing for my linguistics thesis, so that's good. Probably my main concern is the neuroscience lab because I'm looking at biological motion perception so it feels like this sort of weird outlier that I've spent tons of time on (it's my other thesis). But I'm sure I can sort of brush over it and talk about the general research skills I've gained and not focus too much on the high-level vision aspects 

 

Yeah, originally I was thinking of applying to exclusively linguistics programs, but I am not looking to get into theory. Most of the professors I wanted to work with in ling departments have joint appointments with the cog sci/psych department, so I figured it makes more sense to work with the person I want to work with while also having the resources (money, equipment, more faculty, etc.) of a cog sci/psych department. So yeah, UCLA and Penn are definitely outliers in my list of schools, but they have a couple people that I really like. My main interest is syntactic processing/language processing in general, but I'm also really into phonetic perception (hence my interest in UCLA for Megha Sundara, Bruce Hayes, etc.) Oh, and I do like Maryland a lot! I haven't decided if I'm going to apply yet -- I was sort of throwing around the idea of applying for their post-bacc.

[isilya]

Regarding the various research experience, I do not think it will be detrimental to your application. I'm in the same boat as you. Though my university doesn't technically have "labs" in the life sciences, I've had some varied independent research projects (that I've done beyond what was expected of me). What I've done in the SOP is made these different topics surround my current research interests.

No one is expected to know what they exactly want to do in the first or second year of university. Even then, who you work with as an undergrad depends on who is taking in students. As Fuzzy said, too much experience is never really a problem.

Thanks for the advice!! Luckily my longest research experience is related to what I want to do in grad school, so it'll frame my SOP nicely, and I can mention the others but not in as much detail 

[fuzzylogician]

Yeah, originally I was thinking of applying to exclusively linguistics programs, but I am not looking to get into theory. Most of the professors I wanted to work with in ling departments have joint appointments with the cog sci/psych department, so I figured it makes more sense to work with the person I want to work with while also having the resources (money, equipment, more faculty, etc.) of a cog sci/psych department. So yeah, UCLA and Penn are definitely outliers in my list of schools, but they have a couple people that I really like. My main interest is syntactic processing/language processing in general, but I'm also really into phonetic perception (hence my interest in UCLA for Megha Sundara, Bruce Hayes, etc.) Oh, and I do like Maryland a lot! I haven't decided if I'm going to apply yet -- I was sort of throwing around the idea of applying for their post-bacc.

 

<rant> I wish more people who are into sentence processing would do it through a linguistics department instead of a psychology department. You are trained to ask different kinds of questions in those two places. So much of the work that's out there now is, to me, nothing more than 'look, this cool thing happens!' but it doesn't tell us anything about how we should then think of the language faculty with relation to these findings. It's not related to any theory, doesn't serve to restrict or reshape the theory. If you end up actually thinking about it in that way, you realize that the design of many experiments is such that you could explain the results in several different ways and important factors that would distinguish between the predictions of different theories were not controlled for in any way...it's just very upsetting sometimes. I just wish more people did good theory driven experimental work. (Sorry, this is a passion of mine. I got into processing through a linguistics program and reading the literature can be very frustrating.) </rant> 

 

If you're into processing, I'll just mention places where I know at least one good person in linguistics doing that kind of work. Maybe you already know them, but anyway, here goes (note: I don't know the phonologists/phoneticians everywhere). Harvard (Jesse Snedeker, Masha Polinsky); UChicago (Ming Xiang); Maryland (Colin Phillips, Jeff Lidz); UMass (Brian Dillon, Lyn Frazier); MIT (Martin Hackl, Edward Flemming, Adam Albright); UC Santa Cruz (Matt Wagers); McGill (Michael Wagner, Morgan Sonderegger). Good luck with your application! 

[lewin]

If you think you've worked in too many labs, just omit some. There's no rule that says you need to list all of them on your CV or even mentioning them in your statement.  It's the same rule for any resume, you only list the job relevant positions or where omitting something would create an unexplained gap in your work history. As a student that latter problem shouldn't apply.  You're probably better off using the space to describe the relevant positions in more detail then waste space describing irrelevant RA jobs. You wouldn't talk about working as a camp counsellor as a sophomore, right?

 

It's different if you fill out some sort of application form that requests all positions, then you're being deceptive by omitting something.

Edited September 8, 2014 by lewin