Why do we need that calc and stats course? (Laura Klein)

[This post was submitted by Laura Klein, a 2011 grad of the IBH program]

Greetings from graduate school, current and future IBH-ers!

This week, I’m starting my second year as a graduate student in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Two weeks ago, I came back from collecting an awesome set of pilot data for my dissertation at the field site in Poland where I first worked as an undergrad in IBH.  I recently had a birthday. Life is good.

But this time of year- the time of year to select classes- always brings up strong feelings of regret for classes I didn’t take as an undergrad. Not biology, evolution, or bioanthropology courses- things that would seem really, directly important to what I’m doing now. I regret never taking more math and statistics. I could plead ignorance and say I wasn’t told these would be important, but the truth is I was just late in understanding.

When I first sat at an information session for IBH more than five years ago, I couldn’t believe the places IBH students were going. But as I listened to Dr. Cheeseman speak, I could almost picture myself doing a vague amazing something… until we got to the course plan. Any buds of hope for my own amazing IBH adventures were nearly killed by icy fear when I heard “Calculus sequence” and “advanced statistics” among the required courses.  Had I realized how much calculus would be used in the physics classes, I probably would have been scared of those too. I wasn’t alone in my fear of “the Calculus” either- many of my classmates and the students I helped interview later said their only apprehension about the program was the math requirements.

I came dangerously close to walking away from IBH because I didn’t understand why I would need calculus, physics, or statistics. My 18-year-old self just didn’t see the point- even when Dr. Cheeseman spelled it out:

The point of IBH is not to put students on a specific path, but to give you a toolbox that you could take with you in any direction.  Calculus, physics, and most importantly statistics are the foundation of a toolbox that can take you places.

Ingenious experimental design and precision lab skills are worthless if you don’t have the intellectual tools to analyze the data. Some simple statistics can be done without a lot of math background. But if you start to look at the fancy statistics- the tools that can actually tell you something about a complex system - the list of basic mathematical prerequisites can be long (including calculus and beyond into linear algebra and differential equations). Now, if you just stay away from complex systems, you could stick with the most basic statistics. Raise your hand if you’ve had a conversation with a biologist that didn’t include: “But you know, it’s a complex system.”  I’m going to make a safe bet that there are no hands raised out there.

In the short term, the math background will make you a stronger applicant to graduate schools. When I was doing my grad school interviews at Emory and Harvard, the thing that impressed interviewers most was not the biology or anthropology courses that would be (seemingly) most relevant to my graduate work. What made the IBH curriculum really stand out for them was the math and physics. Without exaggeration, I spent 20 minutes of a 30 minute interview at one of these schools discussing only my math and physics courses.  

Why should math stand out? Because so many biologists avoid taking more than the minimum. I was sitting in an introductory anatomy class last year, and the professor was trying to explain how joints work using torque equations dragged right out of Physics 211. Unexpectedly, the flash animations from the 211 pre-lectures popped into my head and things started to click for me. But I was in the minority of people in the room… and I could have smacked my forehead when I heard “I thought there was no math in biology, that’s why I’m pre-med.”

If you think there is no math in biology, please e-mail me or any of your professors or TAs immediately. We will send protective football padding for when reality hits, because it will hit mercilessly. Somehow in biology, there is a long time in which students may sail through courses and labs and not realize how vital math-especially statistics- is to being a biologist. This period of blissful ignorance usually goes just past the time when you are firmly invested in your major, but it can extend as far as being accepted to and moving into your lab in graduate school.  By the time many people realize that this “no math” thing is myth, there are too many competing interests to give statistics the time it probably deserves: experiments demands attention, grants need to be written, semesters available for taking classes are slipping away.

In the long run, if you’re going to be an academic, I’m starting to understand that statistics training is like gaining extra research dollars out of every grant you will ever receive. How? You won’t have to hire a statistician to analyze your data for you. You won’t have to make sure you collaborate with someone who can do your stats but might want to tag extra procedures or time onto your project. You’ll be invited to collaborate on papers with people who don’t have your training. And if you’re going into private research or industry- or business! or purchasing a home/life insurance!- many of the same principles apply. I’m not sure I know of a profession where knowing too much math has ever hurt a job applicant.

However, just because these classes will be useful does not mean they will be easy. You don’t need to be afraid, but you do need to be realistic. If you need help, get it while there is still time in the semester to really learn the concepts and not “almost catch up” (see Kamil’s excellent blog post on how not to get into grad school for more on this).  You will be with engineers and people who have a lot more daily exposure to these concepts than you, but this does not mean that these classes are out of your reach.  I needed tutoring for Calc II & III, and Physics 211 & 212. And I mean a lot of tutoring. Plus office hours, study groups, and hours of practice exams.  At Illinois, there are resources to make sure you can succeed- the math department has free tutoring, and physics department has reasonable tutoring prices and lots of office hours. If you’re struggling, you are not alone. The older students are all still alive- ask them about TAs, tutors, and other places to get help.

If you’re already in IBH, my best advice to you is to take your statistics as early as you can and take more classes than required. Look for classes that emphasize applied knowledge. Find out what statistical software is used in your desired career and learn it. If you haven’t started down the IBH path yet, don’t let a fear of math deter you from IBH or a career in biology.  If you identify your own roadblocks now and start asking how you can get help to work around them, IBH can help set you on a path to go wonderful places.

Advice to students applying for Gates Cambridge scholarship (Matt Grobis)

Greetings from Warsaw!

I'm in Poland visiting some relatives on vacation after graduating from U of I. A friend just asked me for some advice on applying for a Gates Cambridge scholarship so I figured I'd post this here too. I didn't have any luck with the application, but I can still give some advice that might help you decide if you want to apply for one, or if you do apply for one, things to consider.

A Gates Cambridge scholarship is full funding to receive a Master's or PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. They're ridiculously competitive, but if you manage to get one, you're essentially guaranteed a PhD from one of the most prestigious universities in the world. From my experience, admission to PhD programs at Cambridge is limited by funding, not space, so for most applicants, they will be admitted to the university but then won't receive funding and will have to withdraw. But anyway, here are some specific tips/thoughts:

1. Competition is ridiculous. I'm not sure how much this reflects the selectivity of Cambridge versus Gates, but I was eliminated pretty much immediately for the Gates. The way it works is that each department in the university ranks all of the applicants and sends information on the 4-6 highest-ranked candidates to the Gates committe. From this, the committee narrows it to around 2-3 for an interview, and then from the interview, it selects half to receive the award. This goes on until about February; after that, Cambridge moves on to the next top third of applicants on the list and considers them for funding. I was apparently ranked in the bottom third and hence asked to withdraw my Cambridge application, haha. Tough crowd! One potential confounding factor is that the advisor I applied to work with accepted a faculty position at another university and would have been unable to advise me anyway... I'd like to think that him leaving influenced the department's decision to rank me so poorly, but I'm not sure.

2. Now that I've established that you have a great shot at the Gates if you do exactly as I did, I'll tell you what I did. I e-mailed a brand-new professor (from now on: Alex) and said I was interested in such and such areas he was researching. Then, he said he had room in the lab and would like to have a research proposal. We e-mailed back and forth and talked on Skype to get a rough 3-year plan. The difficult thing about Cambridge is they want you to have an exact plan on everything you will do during your three years there so that you do, actually, graduate on time. The department I applied to (Experimental Psychology) wanted a polished two-page proposal in the later stages of my application. Surprisingly, Alex helped me go through a few drafts with him before I submitted. The US seems to be a bit unique in that its graduate students arrive, explore their interests, and then work towards a dissertation. From what I've seen, the UK is very much "here's a project I'm working on, it's yours" or "I want to know exactly what your plans are, why you're the most qualified person in the world to do them, and why they're important." So, get a very solid project lined up with a professor who is very interested in you before you apply, or you don't have a good chance at getting funding.

3. If you do find a professor who is interested, and after e-mailing back and forth for a few days/weeks you have a very solid project established (you know exactly the materials you need, the schedule of experiments / fieldwork you'll run, etc.), start working on the essays. Here, much more so than for the Fulbright, show your academic qualifications. The last guy from U of I to get a Gates had eight publications by the time he graduated. Show that you not only have the techniques required but also the mind to carry out the experiment and make everything work. Find very solid reasons for why your project is important. The department needs to rank you high enough for the Gates committee to even read your application, so hit them hard with your research qualifications and rock-solid broader impacts logic, then leave the flowery writing to the Gates essay (not sure actually what consistutes a good Gates essay... the examples on the internet range from talking about the links between the art of painting and molecular biology, Fulbright-style "this is the story of how I came to apply", and hardcore "I have these qualifications. These are what is required to do this project. This is the hole in the world my research is filling.").

4. Once you open a Cambridge application, update it regularly (once every few days), even something meaningless if you have to. If you don't update it for two weeks, the application program sets a timer on your application to terminate it in one week, regardless of how many times you update it after the timer's set. That happened to my friend Beth and really stressed her out, haha.

That's all I can think of right now. I think I didn't get the Gates for a few reasons: my project involved working with birds, and I had no previous experience handling birds. I'd never published before and had worked in an animal behavior lab for only a year by the time I submitted my app. I tried putting a conservation spin on my project (corvid cognition and social learning)... minimal implications for conservation, unfortunately, so I'm pretty sure the department saw right through that (it's worth noting that you can still have very strong 'importance and outreach' implications that don't require conservation). Otherwise, it's probably just a testament to how insane the competition is. I had good grades, extracurriculars, and strong letters of rec but I think research experience is at least 90% of their decision.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

Best,
-Matt

Fulbright (Matt Grobis)

Hi all!

To those who haven’t heard of the Fulbright grant, a Fulbright is funding to do research or teach English for one year in a foreign country. Because everything is paid for, you can imagine it’s fairly competitive. (For more info, go to http://us.fulbrightonline.org)

I was lucky enough to be selected for one. Next year, I’ll be carrying out a Fulbright research grant at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, in Germany, studying the intersection of great tit personality and social behavior. One of the projects I’m looking forward to working on is examining how birds of different degrees of boldness rely on conspecifics to find food. One application of this is ensuring beneficial human-animal interactions; understanding how knowledge about foraging sites travels through groups can help us predict native bird populations’ responses to anthropogenic habitat change, for example. I will be working with Dr. Niels Dingemanse, a researcher at the MPIO and also a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich. The Institute is located a forty-minute train ride south of Munich and I’m very excited to explore the city and learn about German culture. Hopefully a year of German at U of I is enough to let me get by, though I’ll be keeping a dictionary close by!

I first learned of the Fulbright a year ago, when I was looking at graduate schools. I found a girl doing really cool research on tiger-human conflict in India and e-mailed her, asking if she had any advice for how she got to where she was. In her very helpful response, she mentioned her Fulbright year in India and how it’d helped her decide what to do for a PhD. Shortly afterwards, I met with the head of my research lab, Dr. Alison Bell, and asked for her help finding someone with whom I could do research abroad. Dr. Dingemanse’s research interested me the most, and after an e-mail that took me a few tries to write, I received a good response! We e-mailed back and forth over project ideas and came up with a tentative project. Meanwhile, I was working on my Fulbright application with the help of the National and International Scholarships Office at U of I (http://topscholars.illinois.edu). I’m very thankful to Laura Hastings and David Schug, who helped me through every step of my application. I would recommend to anyone even considering pursuing the Fulbright to fill out an application; the process of organizing your life up to this point and deciding what direction you want to go with it now was immensely helpful.

I was on the waitlist for ten weeks, so I feel very, very fortunate to be in this position. My advice to anyone considering applying for a Fulbright comes in four parts. First, start early! It’s crazy to think I started working on my Fulbright application over a year before I heard the final result. First drafts of essays are always terrible and it takes everyone a while to find an angle to their application. Keep pushing. Have friends, family, and professors give you feedback, and you’ll end with something you’re happy with. Second, find very good reasons why your Fulbright has to be in the country you chose. If you want to teach English in Ecuador, why not Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, or Spain? How is a neuroscience lab in Switzerland better than MIT or Cambridge? Outside of research, what can you offer Madagascar that you couldn’t to South Africa or Ghana? Third, be as specific as possible whenever possible. Anyone can write “I plan to volunteer while I’m in Vietnam” and get away with it. It looks much, much better to write “I have contacted this non-profit in the nearby town, which is ten minutes away by bike, and the head of the program, Mrs. such and such, has agreed that I can help on these projects.” Fourth, throughout the whole process, be humble and thankful. Your application needs to make you look awesome, true, but your success highly depends on the help of a lot of people. Say thanks to your letter of recommendation writers. Understand that the person you contact to do research with is taking a chance by responding to an e-mail from someone he or she has never met.

If you apply and you’re lucky, you will get to spend a year in another country learning from others and about yourself. But even if you don’t receive a grant, you will still learn from the experience and be better-prepared for selling yourself to graduate schools or potential employers. I wish you the best of luck! Send your applications to the National and International Scholarships Office before the July 1 priority deadline (if you can!), and please message me if you’d like advice or another pair of eyes on your essays.

-Matt

Top Ten Ways NOT to get into Graduate School

So it is that time of the year again: IBH students are running off to graduate schools, medical schools (or other professional schools), and their first “real-world” jobs. Some of you are probably wondering how to get into the graduate school of your dreams. While I am definitely no authority in that area and there are numerous how-to resources available on the internet, I thought I would write up an article on the ten best ways NOT to get into graduate school. So here it goes:

10. Not listening to your closest friends. 

Sure, they don’t know how you feel, but that might be a good thing since they CAN SEE the amount of stress you’re going through. While this might be hard to believe, from your friends’ perspectives, you started off looking like Thomas the Train…

"I think I can, I think I can." 

…but by mid-semester, ending up looking like a train wreck. 

"Yo, what's up guys? No, I'm fine, why?" 

9. Not listening to your academic advisor.

Not listening to your friends is one thing, but it takes a special blend of arrogance and a naïve-nature to not heed your academic advisor’s warnings. Chances are that you’re not the first overly-ambitious student to walk into his/her office so this is a time to listen! Yes, taking an x amount of credit hours over 18 might be okay, but you should listen to what taking those extra x hours means. Also if your advisors look like this…

…or this…

…then you should really know to listen!

 8. Listening to your first immigrant or non-college educated parents a bit too much.

Ah yes, disregarding the advice of the people who interact with you on a daily basis and your academic advisor is totally logical when you take up the advice of your parents who never went through the American university system themselves. Their anecdotal stories of how Susie Q. was able to go through college while taking 22 credit hours each semester, completing multiple majors, being involved in no less than five clubs (with leadership positions, of course), having a full-time job, doing research, maintaining a 4.0 gpa, and getting college totally paid for sounds like a lot of bull crap, but you’ll buy into it anyway and try to be Susie Q. (who is probably the collective sum of all the positives of the children from your parents’ coworkers). Point is, there is no Susie Q., and even if there was, you’re not Susie Q. So when the going gets though, it’s time to listen to your friends and advisors.

Susie Q.

 7. Being pre-occupied with funding college.

College is expensive, but it is also one of the most important investments you’ll (probably) ever make. While it would be nice to have college paid for, spending hours completing scholarship applications for the “write-10-pages-describing-your-most-whatever-moment-in-your-life” to try to earn an insignificant amount of $100 is probably not the best use of your time. Focusing on keeping your GPA up will bring in greater awards anyway (by allowing you to apply for scholarships that actually take a significant amount of your load) and is a much better use of your time. In the end, if you have to take up a lot of loans, just remember that your future job will help pay all those off.

6. Not finishing what you started is a terrible idea! actually totally okay. 

Your first priority as a college student is to finish college well. All other priorities come secondary. Have to choose between studying for orgo or helping with finishing decorating for the program you suggested at your residence hall? Choose studying. Especially since when you're done studying for your classes, you should start studying for your GREs or MCAT (or whatever).  Don’t feel guilty for not helping finish a project that a group of other people are equally excited for, but don't show up to help for.  The same goes for all other activities (i.e. clubs, meetings, job, etc...).

 This is totally okay.

5. Assuming higher level courses will become relatively easier compared to your core courses.

 I have heard over and over again that higher level courses are relatively easier compared to your core courses and its true to some degree, but don’t let that get into your head. They only appear easier because of the hard work ethic you’ve built in the first couple years (the curve helps too).   I don't know what this is doing here at number 5...this should've been number 10.  Anyway, point is, focus on your current courses with the same level you always have (unless your focus level was low to begin with).  If you have to, take another semester or two to finish your degree.

4. Conducting your research for your senior thesis with very limited adviser interaction (whether that adviser be a professor or a graduate student).

If there is one thing I could change about my undergraduate research, it would be to work under more guidance. Although the initial amount of control I had over the project was very appealing, there was a lot of time spent reinventing the wheel as each mistake made me realize that it could have been prevented with just a little bit more knowledge or experience. You couple that with a project that is relatively unfunded, you will not only be searching for money to pay for school, but for money to pay for your undergraduate research.

The ideal undergrad research experience.  Thesis entitled "The variation in madreporite size in Pisaster brevispinus at Hanalei Bay in Kauai, Hawaii."

The less ideal undergrad research experience.  Thesis entitled "The variation in asinine responses to fire by undergraduate Homo sapiens at John G. Smithe Hall in Champagne, Illinois."

 3. Not budgeting your time correctly.

The current state and national monetary budget crises should give you a glimpse of the disaster of poor budgeting skills.

Pretty soon, you’ll start “borrowing” time from other projects and activities and to “pay back” for that “borrowed” time, you’ll start “borrowing” from even more places. The path is totally unsustainable. There aren’t enough seconds in a day to fuel all your ambitions just as there isn’t enough money to fund every single government program or misadventure.  In short, if you don't have a Time-Turner like Hermione or can't steal more time like that Timberlake fellow, then you're better off budgeting what you have and not wasting it.

Actually, with only 25 seconds left, Timberlake might not have been the best example to give here.

 2. Trying to prove something. 

Sometimes when I  mess up, I try to take on even more things and be successful to lessen that mess-up and make it seem irrelevant.  Yeah, don’t do that. This is an example of another unsustainable strategy. If you keep messing up and keep raising the bar higher, you will never succeed. If you’re messing up, the universe is telling you don’t do it. You’re not up to the challenge and creating hard, unreachable goals will only de-motivate you.

1. Not sleeping. 

My mom used to tell me, “You’re six years old, not five. Act like it.”

Well, in this case, I’ll just say: You’re a human being, not a computer. Act like it.

Remember that ultimately you're responsible for you. Hope some of you find this helpful and good luck on applying to schools and jobs!!

Biologi i Uppsala! Detta är inte Amerika… (Abigail)

(Biology in Uppsala! This is not America… )

Hej IBHers! As many already know, I am currently doing a semester abroad at Uppsala University in Sweden. Now that I have been here for over 2 months (wow time really flies) I thought it was time to share my experiences with my fellow IBHers.

To sum up my experience thus far: studying biology in Uppsala has been amazing! For the first 10 weeks of the semester, I took a master’s level course in Behavioural Ecology. As of now, I am doing a research internship in environmental toxicology and studying basic Swedish.

Swedish trees in the snow

As you can probably already tell, the education system in Sweden is very different from our system back home. The biggest difference is that in Sweden you typically only take one class at a time. For biology majors, these classes are full time and run for about 5 to 10 weeks. Some students will occasionally take two classes, but each class has a half time load. At the advanced level, most students take two 10-week classes each semester.

If you are a typical IBH student, the concept of taking one class at a time probably disturbs you. Can you imagine functioning without the stress of biology, chemistry, math and/or physics propelling you forward? When I first arrived here, I thought Swedes were just lazy. I mean, the undergrads don’t even have to take any physics! But during my time here I have come to realize that Swedes aren’t lazy, they are just practical and efficient.

Swedish trees without snow! 

Back home, I often feel like I am being pulled in at least 10 different directions. So being here and being able to focus on one subject has been nothing short of amazing. I have begun to completely question the non-Swedish way of doing things. How much can you really get out of a class when you are busy worrying about your other 3 exams and that paper you have to write? It just makes more sense to focus all your energy on one task at a time.

I think the world has a lot to learn from the Swedish education model. I have had a chance to get to know a few Swedish students, and their undergraduate experiences are so completely different from mine. Biology majors at Uppsala University complete a 3 years bachelor program. Within this program, students do not have to take any physics or any general education requirements and all chemistry courses (basic-principles-orgo-biochem) are taken in one semester. While the thought of a semester of only chemistry makes me cringe, it must be nice to get everything over with at once.

And nobody here worries about GPAs, because they don’t have them! In most cases, your grade depends almost entirely on your exam score (3=passing, 4=very good, 5=excellent). While many Swedes I have talked to strive for a 5, they seem to only really care if they pass the exam. BUT, if they do not pass the exam they are allowed to retake it! As long as you have completed the required seminars/labs, you are allowed to retake an exam until you pass.

Pictures from 2 of Uppsala's biology related museums: a red panda specimen (evolutionary biology museum) and a dangerous plant (botanical gardens). 

And while the masters is becoming optional in America, in most European education systems, the masters is a necessary step towards getting a phD. Unfortunately for us, doing a masters in Sweden is no longer free for Americans! 

However, there is a downside to the Swedish education style. While the majority of exchange students spend 2 to 6 hrs a week in class, science students can expect to spend anywhere from 5 to 8 hours a day in class! This may also seem disturbing to many IBHers, who probably carefully plan their schedules in order to have days off or to sleep in. I must admit that spending all day (everyday!) in class can be very frustrating, especially when you are in a new country!

So if you are looking for a program to “slack around” abroad, don’t come to Uppsala to study biology! However, I believe that this intensity is what allows Uppsala to remain a top ranked University, especially in regards to their biology programs! And despite sitting in class all day, professors always give you plenty of time to fika! (like seriously, you break for fika almost every hour...)

 Fika: a social coffee/cake break! The most important (and best) part of Swedish culture!
Here: morotkaka och kaffe (carrot cake and coffee)

Time to Apply for Summer Internships!

So we are halfway through the academic year, it is freezing cold...err...pleasantly cool outside, and the snow rises eight...zero inches above the ground. Sounds like you should be working on those internship applications!
So why would you want an internship experience?
Well, you don’t plan on going to school forever, do you (MD-PhD people please don’t answer that)? Of course not! Which means you’ll need a job after you finish college.
An internship allows you to put your foot in a company’s door without needing to commit a number of years after graduating. The great thing about an internship is that a company will usually choose from one of its own meaning that prior experience with the company means a greater shot of being employed with that company after graduation.
The experience will also allow you broaden your knowledge in a way that a classroom never will. Not only will you apply your classroom knowledge, but you will be learning a number of new techniques in related fields. Furthermore, a classroom necessarily allows room for error in techniques. That is, you do not need to completely master a technique in order to pass the class. During your internship experience, you’ll have no way out.
The level of mastery you gain will give you a lot of confidence. Not only have you mastered a number of complicated laboratory techniques, but you can confidently build your resume and show future employers/grad schools that you have the research experience they’re looking for.
Speaking of which, you might want to continue going to school after you’re done with your BS. An internship opportunity is also a networking opportunity. Your mentor at whatever institution/company you’re working for already finished their MA/PhD! They’ll probably have a lot of good advice on where to apply (and can probably write a good recommendation letter)!
So how do I find an internship that fits me?
Well, to start, you either belong in the category of people who know (or think they know) what they want to do or you belong in the “I don’t know what I want to do with my life” category. I’ll address the former first.
So you think you know what you want to do, eh? Well, half the work is done then. All you have to do is either visit your advisor or Google internship opportunities with whatever it is you want to do. For me, I knew I wanted to do something related with the origin of life or early evolution of the planet. Before long, I found that NASA does a lot of research in that sort of stuff and that NASA Ames was the place to go.
And now, for the rest of you…the best I can do is to recommend some internships that sound interesting. I always contemplated on applying for a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates). Just Google REU and have at it. There are a number of different experiences available in a number of fields. If you’re unsure on what to do with your life, this may be the perfect place to start.
The government manages several national laboratories (but perhaps, not for long *coughronpaulcough*). These labs do research in everything from agriculture and ecology to biophysics and molecular biology. You can probably find something you’ll like there. The website to go to is science.gov.
If all else fails, talk (and listen…more on that in the future “how to NOT get into grad school” blog) to your academic or honors advisor. :-)