Ok-Experience5604 OP t1_irbqlb0 wrote on October 6, 2022 at 8:23 PM

Reply to comment by curiousshortguy in [D] How hard is it to join a lab during Master's? by Ok-Experience5604

Thank you so much for the detailed response!

>Sometimes, labs also have funding for student researchers. They do work that's not part of their thesis, and that's much rarer, and in most countries, the pay is shit compared to jobs in industry (I guess: welcome to academia).

If I understand correctly, funding is often a big obstacle when it comes to engaging students in research. This might be a silly question, but do you think that asking to be engaged for no pay, emphasizing you're very determined to gain experience would generally be a good idea?

>Ivy League like places where currently a whole pipeline of FAANG engineers pushes their high-school students as interns through a pipeline to have their names top-tier conference publications before they even graduate high school

While I am in no position to try and aim for these places, it does make me worry that I would have to compete with an abundance of people with such qualifications at every step. I've recently burned myself trying hard to get chosen for summer research programs.

curiousshortguy t1_irc2htk wrote on October 6, 2022 at 9:51 PM

> This might be a silly question, but do you think that asking to be engaged for no pay, emphasizing you're very determined to gain experience would generally be a good idea?

Doesn't hurt to ask. A good approach is to see if the lab has a list of research grants on their website. Look at those, and you might be able to infer where funding is available. Same goes for the recent papers, they give you good indications. It's even better if you're taking a class and can engage the team via that.

>I am in no position to try and aim for these places, it does make me worry that I would have to compete with an abundance of people with such qualifications at every step. I've recently burned myself trying hard to get chosen for summer research programs.

Don't be discouraged, you only need to be accepted once :D

To be fair, 75% your success in applications to Faang and Ivy League will be via recommendations and network. You have a full 2 years to build that.