In 2022, only 18,000 out of over 2 million college graduates earned their degree in chemistry or biochemistry. Of that small number, 14% have gone on to pursue a graduate degree in the same field according to the Pew Research Center. The decision to attend graduate school is a difficult one, but each member of this cohort made the same rare choice. What led them to take this leap?
Were they prepared for the challenges they would face? What have they learned through their experiences so far? To answer these questions, we sat down with four students in the chemistry department at the University of Michigan to learn more about their paths to graduate school. We found a great diversity of timelines, motivations, and stories, but plenty in common as well.
For most, graduate school starts the same year they earn their bachelor’s degree. This was the case for Michela Maiola, a fourth-year student in the Buss group who started at Michigan following her graduation from the University of Rochester. “I think my undergrad prepared me for sure,” she said. “The balance of research, teaching, and school started very early…Nothing was a surprise to me.” As an undergraduate, she performed research in the lab of Professor Ellen Matson while also taking classes and serving as a TA for a lab course.
Despite having experienced the expectations and schedule of a graduate student, she still felt lost while applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program her senior year, finding it difficult to write about new science. However, she viewed it as another challenge to be met and had the support of her mentors to achieve what she had envisioned for herself.
For students who take a less traditional path to graduate school, the journey is still filled with valuable experiences and unexpected difficulties. Lindsay Heagle, a second-year in the Bailey Lab, took a gap year after not being admitted to graduate school when she initially applied.
“I was crushed that I didn't get in, but it was my professors telling me ‘I can't believe you didn't get in, I have faith in you’ that really did encourage me to apply again later.” In the meantime, she worked as a quality control analyst for Millipore-Sigma testing specialized compounds. It gave her the opportunity to continue practicing her skills as a chemist while giving her a glimpse into the industrial work environment. Ultimately, it reaffirmed her commitment to reapply to PhD programs.
“In general, I was happy to take kind of a step away from academics for a year and just know whether or not I actually wanted to pursue grad school.” It also helped her to examine her own motivations for wanting to continue doing research. “It's just a completely different environment, the expectations are different in both places, your ultimate goals are a lot different…At the end of the day in academics, here we can fail a million times and we're learning something each step.”
Kyle Chong, a first-year student in 2023-24, said that the teachers he had in high school had inspired him to pursue chemistry. He chased this passion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign but had to be adaptable when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
“Getting into a lab for research was very difficult,” he said, but once he joined Professor David Sarlah’s group, he was able to participate in research and build his skills with his mentor. “I felt behind – I focused a lot of time into trying to catch up to what I thought was being at par with everyone.”
His mentor would provide him with named reactions to learn mechanisms and prepare him for what graduate school had in store. Throughout this, Chong says he gained a lot of perspective about how to use his time effectively and to focus on his own growth. “I'd rather honestly be the worst in the room because at that point I have so much I can learn from everybody else…That's the mentality I try to keep.”
Jarrod Stanley, a third-year student in the Montgomery lab, felt that his experience serving in the United States Navy was formative and prepared him to pursue his own goals saying that he didn’t know if he would have been as successful if he had started college immediately after high school. “The Navy gave me the opportunity to fail safely and fail forward…It gave me a little more confidence and being able to recognize self-doubt more readily.”
After leaving the military, he attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and began to work with Professor Mitchell Croatt. Stanley says that Croatt drastically changed his perspective on chemistry and many other facets of life. After Stanley completed his master’s degree, he began to consider graduate school at the strong urging of a mentor in his lab.
The move to Michigan had its own challenges, but Stanley was driven to overcome them. “Looking back on it, it doesn't seem that significant, but when going through that turbulent first two years, it felt really, really hard…It also kind of like shook me in my confidence in myself as a chemist and my knowledge, but it also it also drove me.”
In the end, the path to graduate school has been challenging for each of these students in unique ways, but their perseverance and the support of their mentors continues to guide them in graduate school and beyond. Maiola plans on becoming a post-doctoral researcher at a national lab. Chong wants to pursue a career in drug discovery. Stanley plans on attending law school, and Heagle hopes to be a professor, lifting up students the way she was by her own mentors.
Says Heagle, “If I could be that to somebody else someday, I think I'd be really happy.”
