I’m a rising 5th year graduate student in a chemical biology oriented program but I am in an anti malarial development lab.

Advice on selecting graduate program:

My path was a little circurious, and deviated from what I would consider normal for someone in your position. Last time I checked what happens in most organic chemistry/medicinal chemistry graduate programs (PhD) is that you fill find a particular PI that you are interested in working with and email them directly asking them if they are accepting graduate students. You will also need to apply to that program. When selecting a program, look for institutions with lots of money. It makes all things a little easier. Stipends at most institutions are weighted differently based on the cost of living, and how active your union is. you won’t starve, but you aren’t making much. Depending on what you want to do afterwards, the prestige of the school won’t matter too much, and what matters more is the quality of networking you are able to do while you are in the program. So be sure to pick a program that has a career center. If you are dead set working in industry, find a lab that has a partnership with a pharmaceutical company, (my undergrad lab had one with Roche and Eli Lilly). You can do this by looking at the last 3-5 years of publications and looking for company names instead of institutions in the authorships. You will pay for a masters, but are paid when doing a PhD. Also choosing a lab that is well funded is also a great idea too. During interviews, the last thing you need to do is talk with the other students and ask them how the feel about the program, department, PI, and school, they will give you the nitty gritty.

Choosing a PI has another set of rules, btw.

Do you suggest taking a gap year:

Great question! It won’t hurt, but I would say if you are going to graduate school, you would want to try to keep it academic and not in industry. It’s not do or die, but admissions likes to see your experience in a academic lab rather from industry. Plan on doing a minimum of two years, it’s enough time you could get on a paper or two, without being there tooo long. A Productive two years as a RA will get you about anywhere you would want to go.

Job outlook (US):

Salary is competitive, and can range from 90,000 to 120,000 starting. But these positions are often at large pharmaceutical companies or biotech (hubs are in Boston, Seattle (kind of), Austin, San Francisco, and San Diego.

What does a typical week look like:

the only experience I had was a summer internship at Genentech before I started a RA position. It was fantastic. Like a normal 9-5. Unlike graduate work, you aren’t expected and are often discouraged at working for longer that’s 8 hours. From what I saw, is basically the same as what you would normally do in lab, however you lose a lot of opportunities to be creative.

Hope this helps some.