<p>Are there any positives to joining a relatively large (~15 grad students) research group? The field is chemical engineering if it matters at all. I have always wanted to join a smaller group of about 6 grad students but it looks like the school I will most likely end up at (UT Austin) has groups that are fairly large. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>I’m not in chem E, but I’m in a relatively large group (6 grad students, 6 postdocs), and I really appreciate the size of the group for the help I can get from my labmates – having a fairly large group of people around you makes it likely that somebody can help you with any problem or question you have.</p>
<p>6 grad students would be ideal for me but 15 is more than twice that size haha</p>
<p>A group of 15 is solid for a school such as UT Austin, even in the sciences. The thing you want to check on before you join a lab is how the lab is managed. Meaning, do post-docs run the lab, and the PI just pops in every couple of months to check on your progress. Alternatively, you could have a group of 15 where the PI is always in the lab, and the post-docs are not running the show. I would prefer the latter, as your PI determines when and if you graduate. You don’t want a PI who runs to China and Europe for 3 months, and leaves the post-docs in charge to manage your research. I have seen groups that are ~15 people run extremely well at large state universities. But I have seen some abominations, like groups with 15 post-docs, and 65 graduate students.</p>
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Sorry – I’m in a group of twelve researchers, some of whom are grad students and some of whom are postdocs. I thought that was an adequate comparison.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply scaleupchem, I guess I will find out how the group functions when I visit in a few weeks.</p>