How to choose between several internship options in a graduate program
September 21, 2015 10:49 AM Subscribe
I am currently doing a two-year M.A. program at a European university, and soon I have to choose between three options for a 10-week internship to begin next quarter. I want to choose the internship that will best set me up to be a competitive Ph.D. candidate, but it's hard to make a decision between options that each have their own pros and cons. What criteria should I use or what aspects of the programs should I give the most weight to when making this decision?
Ultimately, I want to chose the internship that will maximize my chances of being a competitive Ph.D. candidate. My impression is that I should therefore seek an opportunity that will allow me to develop a close, positive relationship with my supervisor (who could eventually write a strong recommendation letter or even create a Ph.D. position for me from their research budget) or choose the internship that could lead to presenting my work at a conference or submitting it for publication. However, because there are so few Ph.D. positions available in my field in this country, I am very aware of what my classmates are doing for their research internships and don't want to chose an option that one of them is also taking. This is because I don't think more than one M.A. student per project would likely be selected for a Ph.D. position in the same year (in this country, Ph.D. positions are strictly project-based). Therefore, I think I need to balance the pros of any particular internship on its own with the cons of doing work that is too similar to that of my classmates' or that puts me in direct competition with them.
Here are the three options I am deciding between:
Option A: Here I would be supervised by a fledgling Ph.D. candidate who has promised to give me very close supervision and is very flexible about what tasks I would like to perform. I think she would be an excellent mentor and someone who could teach me a lot of practical skills. Officially, I would be working under the name of her supervisor who is the head of the local research institute. Her project uses a very novel theoretical framework that shows a lot of promise and could become a very hot one in our field. The potential downsides are that (1) the topic of her research is not the most closely aligned with my research interests up to this point, though I am open to new interests, and (2) she might also end up superivsing a classmate of mine, which I worry would put that classmate and me into a sort of direct competition where we would always be trying to one-up each other, possibly fighting (in subtle ways) over attention and resources, and would be directly compared to each other by the head supervisor.
Option B: Here I would be working with a professor on a topic that aligns extremely well with my own research interests and previous studies up to this point. Therefore, I feel more confident in my background knowledge and more motivated to work on this particular subject matter. However, the task of the internship is relatively uninteresting, a type of data transcription that I could simply do from my home computer. In this way, I worry about not having enough social interaction in the internship since the project not part of a larger lab group that meets regularly. Although the main data transcription task would not be a very interesting skill for me to work on, the professor would be willing to hear my own ideas for future projects where I would play a more interesting role. Therefore, I think this option could be the most interesting of the three but only if I can trust myself to bring enough passion and ideas of my own to it.
Option C: In this project, I would be supervised by a professor on a project that is much closer to my own research interests than Option A but slightly less relevant to my interests than Option B. It is part of a multi-year project with international collaborators that will definitely lead to a publication, but I am not sure that my contribution would be enough to merit co-authorship. My main task could be relatively uninteresting (translating experimental stimuli into another language), but I would probably also get to learn technical aspects of an experimental methodology that I am likely to want to use in the future. The main downside to this option is that again, a fellow classmate will also be working on this same project but with another professor (head of the department). Because she'll be working with the higher-ranked supervisor and already has a head-start on her internship (having done individual projects with the supervisor in this research area already), I worry that I won't be able to compete with her if a direct comparison is made between the two of us.
Question: With these three options in mind, each with their own pros and cons (with regard to the expected quality of mentorship, prestige of supervisor, interestingness of topic, and skills to be gained), how should I make a choice between the three internship options? Should I be legitimately concerned about doing the same project as a peer of mine and the competitiveness that could result? Which criteria are less relevant and which are most important if my ultimate goal is to choose the opportunity that will best set me up to be a strong Ph.D. candidate?
Ultimately, I want to chose the internship that will maximize my chances of being a competitive Ph.D. candidate. My impression is that I should therefore seek an opportunity that will allow me to develop a close, positive relationship with my supervisor (who could eventually write a strong recommendation letter or even create a Ph.D. position for me from their research budget) or choose the internship that could lead to presenting my work at a conference or submitting it for publication. However, because there are so few Ph.D. positions available in my field in this country, I am very aware of what my classmates are doing for their research internships and don't want to chose an option that one of them is also taking. This is because I don't think more than one M.A. student per project would likely be selected for a Ph.D. position in the same year (in this country, Ph.D. positions are strictly project-based). Therefore, I think I need to balance the pros of any particular internship on its own with the cons of doing work that is too similar to that of my classmates' or that puts me in direct competition with them.
Here are the three options I am deciding between:
Option A: Here I would be supervised by a fledgling Ph.D. candidate who has promised to give me very close supervision and is very flexible about what tasks I would like to perform. I think she would be an excellent mentor and someone who could teach me a lot of practical skills. Officially, I would be working under the name of her supervisor who is the head of the local research institute. Her project uses a very novel theoretical framework that shows a lot of promise and could become a very hot one in our field. The potential downsides are that (1) the topic of her research is not the most closely aligned with my research interests up to this point, though I am open to new interests, and (2) she might also end up superivsing a classmate of mine, which I worry would put that classmate and me into a sort of direct competition where we would always be trying to one-up each other, possibly fighting (in subtle ways) over attention and resources, and would be directly compared to each other by the head supervisor.
Option B: Here I would be working with a professor on a topic that aligns extremely well with my own research interests and previous studies up to this point. Therefore, I feel more confident in my background knowledge and more motivated to work on this particular subject matter. However, the task of the internship is relatively uninteresting, a type of data transcription that I could simply do from my home computer. In this way, I worry about not having enough social interaction in the internship since the project not part of a larger lab group that meets regularly. Although the main data transcription task would not be a very interesting skill for me to work on, the professor would be willing to hear my own ideas for future projects where I would play a more interesting role. Therefore, I think this option could be the most interesting of the three but only if I can trust myself to bring enough passion and ideas of my own to it.
Option C: In this project, I would be supervised by a professor on a project that is much closer to my own research interests than Option A but slightly less relevant to my interests than Option B. It is part of a multi-year project with international collaborators that will definitely lead to a publication, but I am not sure that my contribution would be enough to merit co-authorship. My main task could be relatively uninteresting (translating experimental stimuli into another language), but I would probably also get to learn technical aspects of an experimental methodology that I am likely to want to use in the future. The main downside to this option is that again, a fellow classmate will also be working on this same project but with another professor (head of the department). Because she'll be working with the higher-ranked supervisor and already has a head-start on her internship (having done individual projects with the supervisor in this research area already), I worry that I won't be able to compete with her if a direct comparison is made between the two of us.
Question: With these three options in mind, each with their own pros and cons (with regard to the expected quality of mentorship, prestige of supervisor, interestingness of topic, and skills to be gained), how should I make a choice between the three internship options? Should I be legitimately concerned about doing the same project as a peer of mine and the competitiveness that could result? Which criteria are less relevant and which are most important if my ultimate goal is to choose the opportunity that will best set me up to be a strong Ph.D. candidate?
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Everyone has to do grunt work, particularly when you're starting out, so that's not really a negative for B, and social interaction at work is less important than a strong project with a positive recommendation and future support from the supervisor in terms of setting yourself up well for your doctoral program applications.
posted by vegartanipla at 4:34 PM on September 21, 2015