This is where I did the heavy lifting of looking into labs, programs, and schools.  Like I probably have (or will) mention in a different post, people I’ve met seemed to choose schools to apply to in one of two ways (these are the extreme with plenty of people in the middle):

1. Applying to broadly strong programs

1. Applying to programs based on 1-2 labs

 some people choose to apply for broadly strong programs while others apply to programs for specific PIs.  I think the former can be a great approach if you’re broadly interested in an area and open to what exact application you pursue for your MS/PhD.  If you’re narrowed in on a research area, looking for specific PIs and applying to those programs is probably your best bet.  The PI-specific approach is what I did.

So, I spent the summer looking into PIs/labs, which can be a daunting process.  I wrote about some specific ways to help with this in this post.

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