Daniella Lake and Andrew Saintsing: Part 2

Daniella Lake (0:00)

Hello, everyone. You're tuned in to 90.7 FM KALX Berkeley. I'm your host, Daniella Lake, and this is The Graduates, the interview talk show where we speak to UC Berkeley graduate students about their work here on campus and around the world. Today, I'm joined by Andrew Saintsing, my fellow host of The Graduates. Welcome to the show.

Andrew Saintsing (0:24)

Thanks for having me, Daniella. What a great show you have.

Daniella Lake (0:30)

Well, today, I was thinking that we could talk about graduate school in general, your experience being a graduate student, and any advice you may have for people interested in graduate school.

Andrew Saintsing (0:43)

Sure. That sounds good to me. I guess I'd love to help people figure out what they can about grad school before starting or if they're in it and they need advice during it. So yeah, what kind of questions do you have?

Daniella Lake (0:58)

Yeah. So I was thinking, just to start off, could you tell us what program you're in and how many years you've been in it?

Andrew Saintsing (1:07)

I'm in the Department of Integrative Biology. So that's really inclusive biology department that covers topics from paleontology to genetics, to biomechanics and physiology, which is what I do, and it kind of looks across different scales of organization and biology, of time scales, of spatial scales. So it's a really cool department in terms of the diversity of ideas you encounter. I've been in it for five years now, and I'm actually about to wrap up. I am currently writing my dissertation. Won't make the May cut off, but I will be graduating before August. So that's exciting. A little nerve-wracking in some ways, trying to figure out what's coming next, but very exciting to see what comes next, too.

Daniella Lake (2:05)

Yeah. And when did you know that you wanted to go to graduate school? Like, was it just something you always wanted to do, or did it just kind of come upon you one day?

Andrew Saintsing (2:19)

You know, I don't really know. That's an interesting question. So I guess I always kind of didn't have a good idea of what I wanted.

Going out of, like, high school and through undergrad, lots of people just kind of start in biology, thinking maybe they'll be doctors or something afterwards. And so it's, like, easy to just start on a pre-med track or something like that, especially if you're, like, kind of good at school and kind of good at science. It just kind of makes sense when you get out of high school and start college. So I was doing that. And then I didn't really want to be a doctor, though, I found out. And I started my junior year doing research stuff. I worked in a lab with a PI at my school, UNC at Chapel Hill. And I enjoyed that experience. And it was fun to try to explore scientific research. And then after that, I guess I graduated, and I wasn't necessarily positive that I was going to do grad school, but I had a general sense that that was definitely an option and probably something I was going to do. But I graduated without having applied, so I was kind of set on taking a gap year. And then, yeah, I started applying for various things that fall after I graduated from undergrad, but I wasn't really getting anything. And by the time it was time to start thinking about grad school applications, I still wasn't really employed. And I was thinking like, oh, I need to do something. I'll apply to grad school. Probably not the best mentality for starting grad school. But that's how it happened for me. And I guess it worked out, so it's an okay way to start.

Daniella Lake (4:05)

Yeah. And so I was wondering, with the application process, was it really difficult or challenging? Did you face a lot of rejection? And do you know if a lot of rejection is like typical when it comes to graduate school? Like, is it way more competitive usually?

Andrew Saintsing (4:25)

Way more competitive than undergrad?

So I guess, yeah, I faced rejection in that. So I applied, I guess, I started the applications kind of late in the cycle. And I kind of applied a little bit half-assardly to different departments. I was kind of interested in like neuroscience at the time, but also biomechanics. So I applied to like a bunch of neuroscience programs and a few biomechanics programs. And the thing about neuroscience programs is generally like you apply to to like the entire program to work with, potentially work with multiple PIs. And you'll do like rotations when you get there, work in different labs before you settle into one. Whereas with biomechanics or programs that have biomechanics options, they're often in departments where you apply directly to work with a professor. Anyway, that's all to say that the biomechanics programs I applied to, when I applied, I reached out to the professor that I was going to work with. So like my professor here that I work with is Bob Full. So I sent him an email ahead of time and mentioned that I was interested and I got a response from him. And he said like, oh, I've seen the material you sent me, I'm interested in you applying, you should do it. Same thing happened with another biomechanics professor I applied to. The neuroscience, I didn't really have that connection. So that all sets up the, I did get interviews with some of the neuroscience programs and both of the biomechanics programs that I applied to. Some of the neuroscience programs, I didn't get an interview back at all. But so I went on interview weekends and it didn't work out for the two neuroscience programs I interviewed at or the other biomechanics that I applied to. But it worked out here. I got in, I guess, yeah, I had a good connection with Bob and other people on IB. So that's like a, I applied to what? Eight or something, seven, eight programs. So I got like one out of eight, which I guess isn't a good percentage, but I guess you only really need the one because you just go into one program. So anyway, the answer to the question, I guess, is yeah, it's kind of selective, but you just kind of have to do the work ahead of time. Talk to people who can help you figure out which program makes sense for you. You know, if it's like a really top tier program and whatever you're interested in, then probably rejection rates are going to be a lot higher. But you know, you can talk to academic advisors about what makes sense for the grades you have, the extracurricular activities you have. It's important to have like letters of recommendation from people in similar programs. So there's a lot of steps that you can take to make sure that you're a competitive applicant, but there's always a chance that you might not get in. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try again if you didn't get into a program that you are still really interested in.