For senior-year undergrads who consider pursuing grad school in our lab:
As a default, all undergrad students have to spend at least three months volunteer (not paid) period in the lab before making a mutual decision over whether you will keep doing research in the lab or not. We’d like to use this three-month period to get to know you better and evaluate how well you will do during the grad school. If you already have a plenty of research experience (in other labs) and a strong recommendation letter, there could be an exception.
Why we need 3 months? The grad school and academic life is very challenging and never easy. Many times you will feel frustrated and sometimes hopeless. Entering the grad school should not be like “let’s just give it a try” or “한번 해보지 뭐”. You should ponder over what would be like your life in a grad school and academia. Once you enter the grad school, I believe that I must do my best to give you a success in your life and your academic career path. This won’t be easy and will be a huge cost for both of us. Thus, I need to know who you are before I can decide your admission to the grad school. Thus, three months are not very long for me.
I know you will feel anxious during the period because you don’t know whether you will be able to enter the grad school or not. I understand that you will have some uncertainty in that period. But I truly think that those are the costs you should also pay to know more about the lab and me. The relationship between the professor and grad students is somewhat similar to the parents-children relationship, and the lab is like a family (though these relationships are research/project-centered). I don’t think you’d want to have parents and family members you never like for the next 5-6 years. Thus you should also try your best to get to know me and other lab members better during that period. And you should keep asking the following question, “Am I gonna be happy in this lab?”
During the volunteer and undergrad RA period, you will mostly play a helper role for grad students or me. And during that period, we’d expect you to show the following qualities:
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First, conscientiousness and persistence: You need to show diligence, punctuality, and the ability to complete the missions given by grad students and the professor. We will give you some small missions at the beginning, but if you do well, we will give you more important jobs.
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Second, stress and anxiety management, emotion stability: You need to show your ability to manage and regulate stress, anxiety, and negative emotions (e.g., depression, jealousy, disappointment, etc). I’m not saying you should suppress all these emotions, but you should manage and regulate these emotions well. Sometimes, you might need to discuss these with the professor or grad students in the lab. Emotional maturity and stability is a great character that will help a lot your grad school and academic life.
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Third, passion and curiosity: You need to show passion, excitement, and good understanding about the research topics that our lab concerns (e.g., pain and emotions). You won’t be able to find many external rewards in doing science. The biggest motivation in doing science is the internal reward, for example, fulfilling your own curiosity, finding patterns in the data, making useful data analysis tools to help other people etc. You need to show that you have a strong internal motivation about the research our lab cares about.
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Fourth, research and computational skills: You need to show that you have the following research skills: conducting psychology experiments, basic knowledge about computer programming (or you should show you can learn programming fast), basic concepts about data analyses and stats, writing, understanding and conveying abstract ideas, english etc.
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Fifth, collaboration and sociability: Social component is a crucial part in the academic life. As I said above, lab is a kind of family. You need to show that you can fit in other people in the lab, and highly collaborative. For example, you need to be generous with your time and energy when helping others.
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Sixth, academic records: This is actually less important than the lists above, but we will consider grades and other academic records to be fair. If you have a good english score (e.g., teps, toefl) or experience of exchange student, it could be helpful. But as I said this is not a crucial part of the evaluation.
After the three-month period, if we (me and other lab members) still think you’re making good contributions to the lab and will do well in the lab in the future, we will start to pay you a monthly compensation. But if we think that the contributions you’re making are not enough and won’t do well in the lab in the future, we won’t be able to provide a monthly compensation. You could keep working in the lab without compensation, but we’d recommend you finding some alternatives in your life.
Please understand that we cannot provide you with the final answer about the grad school even after the three-month period. The final answer will be given after the grad school application process is done given that we don’t know yet who will apply for the grad school for sure. And please understand that it is likely that we cannot accept all the applicants each year because of the limited number of grad students that I can accept.
If you cannot enter the grad school right away for any reasons, but if you want to keep working in the lab, it is possible that we hire you as a paid BS-level researcher (학사연구원) after you graduate (the payment will be similar to other grad students). If you do well as a BS-level researcher, you will have the opportunity to run your own original research.
If you are considering 전문연구요원 (to fulfill your military duty) during your grad school, you should submit the TEPS score during the three-month volunteer period. I’m not asking to submit your final score. I want to know your baseline TEPS score because I want to make sure you will do well in TEPS when you apply for 전문연구요원. I don’t have the exact cut-off of the TEPS score in my mind for now, but without the TEPS score, I won’t be able to accept you as grad students.
Before you spend the three-month volunteer period, I can’t support the 학석연계 program.