<p>Even though they don’t push their undergrad students?</p>
<p>Seriously?</p>
<p>It’s rare in my experience for professors to have much of any sort of relationship with an undergrad. The 10-16 weeks of a term pass quickly and one has dozens if not hundreds of new undergraduate students each term.</p>
<p>The relationship with PhD students is built over 4 to 6 years and is expected to last well beyond graduation.</p>
<p>The personal investment in PhD students by professors is quite extraordinary and closer in nature to that of a coach in a top individual-sport athlete than to typical teacher in student(s).</p>
<p>Also, when you push undergrads they complain and write bad evals; PhD students suck it up and work harder.</p>
<p>Heh- good reply.</p>
<p>By undergrad students, I meant undergrads who do research. That’s all.</p>
<p>Back to the point of time investment. Professors have a lot more at stake with PhD students than undergrad. You’re only there for anywhere between 1-4 semesters, which in the grand scheme of things while you’re still building the foundation of konwledge is quite small amount of time and personal investments for professors. Also, their PhD students are basically their legacies, they carry on their adviser’s work and methodologies for the next generation.</p>
<p>“their PhD students are basically their legacies”</p>
<p>This is exactly what drives the whole thing, honestly.</p>
<p>PhD students are generally the ones actually doing the work their funding sources require to get done. If they want their funding reviews to go well they need their grad students to do good work. They’re generally spending about $60-80k a year per student, so they expect results out of you. Undergrads are usually free or a few thousand for a whole summer, so they’re not a really large financial investment. Generally, they’re seen as a losing proposition versus PhD students that are expected to put out some papers.</p>
<p>Here’s the blunt truth:</p>
<p>In general, undergrads are a nuisance. Research oriented PI’s would rather not spend any time teaching or being “bothered” by unskilled, knowledge-lacking undergrads.</p>
<p>On the other hand, grad students are highly “skilled”, but cheap labor. They are necessary in the machinery we call research. So PIs may push the grad students because their own work/reputation is at stake.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are exceptions. Some PIs actually like to teach. But they are in the minority.</p>
<p>^ so bitter and hurtful!</p>
<p>Aren’t undergrads even cheaper? Sometimes even free (if done for credits). Some professors have to fund their grad students’ stipend + tuition, which can be over $50k a year.</p>
<p>edit: Just pawn off the undergrads to the grad students, and they get even more cheap labor :P</p>
<p>UGs may be cheaper but they don’t have the kind of skills, experience, and commitment that grad students have.</p>
<p>Undergrads (almost) never get anything meaningful done. By the time you’re really done training an undergrad to the point they can be useful, they’ve graduated.</p>
<p>lol god this thread is starting to get too funny (and I’m one of those other useless undergrads too).</p>
<p>it’s seriously making me starting to wonder why professors sometimes put in so much time for mentoring undergrads for research.</p>
<p>I’d also say that in a lot of labs the professors don’t really oversee their undergrads. Most undergrads get their day-to-day mentorship from a grad student or postdoc, so it’s up to that person to push the undergrad.</p>
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<p>No worries, all of us grad students were worthless undergrads at one point too. It’s actually a funny moment when you realize the stuff you thought was really self-directed you see had been heavily directed and even still they didn’t want to rely a whole lot on the results of your research.</p>
<p>y’all are generalizing too much. Not all of us are worthless. There’s big difference between a freshmen hired to clean dishes, vs a junior/senior that has been around for 2+ semesters. At the end of the day, a lot of research is varying the recipes until you get the thing you want. At that point, all those equations and concepts in those textbooks are secondary. The way I see it, a lot of dedicated upperclassmen undergrads are already semi grad students.</p>
<p>Also, in my experience, professors are there for consulting and sitting behind a desk more than actual research. It’s the graduate students who come up with these papers. That’s what a PhD is: you do research and produce papers, not have the professor hold your hand and you be his b!tch.</p>