How to Get a Research Role: What I Wish I Had Known Before Meeting With a PI

When I got my first meeting with a PI, I was mostly thinking about how I could convince her to take me. I had very little research experience, so I was incredibly grateful that someone was even willing to talk with me. I remember taking the Zoom meeting from my dorm room with my computer awkwardly propped up on a stack of books on my bedside table, feeling very nervous and trying to make a good impression.

Meeting with her quickly eased a lot of that anxiety. She was enthusiastic about her research, kind, and easy to talk to. At the time, I was focused almost entirely on whether she would give me an opportunity to work in her lab. What I did not yet understand was that I was also meeting someone I might spend several years learning from.

I still think students should be genuinely grateful when someone is willing to take a chance on them, especially when they are new to research. At the same time, I wish I had understood earlier that students also have something valuable to offer. If you are curious, motivated, reliable, and willing to learn, those qualities matter in a research environment. The meeting is therefore not only about convincing a PI that you would be a good addition to the lab. It is also an opportunity to figure out whether the research, mentorship, and environment would be a good fit for you.

Prepare Enough to Understand the Conversation

Before meeting with a potential research mentor, I would spend some time learning about their recent work. I find it much easier to do this systematically rather than opening random papers and trying to understand everything at once.

I would start with the lab website and the PI’s biography to get a general sense of their research interests. From there, I would look at their recent work on Google Scholar. It is worth paying attention to where they appear in the author list. If someone is the seventh author on a recent paper, for example, they may have contributed as a collaborator without that project representing the primary direction of their own lab. Papers where they are the first author or senior/final author are often more useful for understanding work they led or research coming directly out of their group.

You do not need to read every paper in full or understand every statistical method and experimental detail. I would focus on the abstracts, introductions, and relevant parts of the methods and try to leave with a general understanding of three things:

1. What questions the lab is interested in; 

2. What kind of research they do;

3. What methods they use to answer those questions.

If you encounter terminology, acronyms, or methods you do not recognize, look them up. This is also one place where I think AI can be incredibly useful. I use it to explain an unfamiliar method, give background on a topic, walk through a confusing section of a paper, or explain a concept at a level that is easier to understand before returning to the original article. I would still read the actual paper, but AI can make it much easier to get oriented when you are entering a field that is new to you.

One thing I would not recommend is pretending to understand something you do not. Humility is much more appealing! The person you are meeting may have spent twenty years thinking about these questions, and they are not expecting an undergraduate or new research assistant to know as much as they do. In my experience, asking a thoughtful question is much more useful than trying to demonstrate expertise you do not yet have.

It is also possible to overprepare. You do not need to memorize someone’s CV or rehearse every sentence you plan to say. I would have a few talking points about who you are, why their work interests you, and what you hope to learn, but the goal is to be prepared enough to participate in a real conversation rather than to deliver a perfectly rehearsed performance.

Have a Plan for How You Want the Conversation to Go

Another thing I did not initially realize is that you may need to help lead the conversation. If you were the person who reached out and asked for the meeting, you should not necessarily assume the PI will arrive with a structured list of interview questions.

Unless they immediately take over the conversation, I would go in with a general sense of how you want the meeting to begin. You might say, “Thanks so much for meeting with me. I can start by introducing myself if that's helpful.” From there, briefly explain who you are, what you are studying, and how your interests led you to their work.

You can then transition into asking about the research. For example, you might say that you saw the lab has been working on a particular topic and that you would love to hear more about what they are currently working on and what opportunities for undergraduates or new research assistants might look like within those projects.

You should also be prepared for basic questions about yourself. A PI may ask why you are interested in their lab, what you hope to learn, how much time you can dedicate, or what kind of research experience you are looking for. Your answer does not need to be especially sophisticated. I found that showing that you have taken the time to understand their work, that you are genuinely interested, and that you are motivated to learn is often more important than having an extensive technical background.

I also think it helps to have some idea of what you want from the experience. You do not need to know exactly what field you want to work in for the rest of your life, but perhaps you want to learn particular bench techniques, work with patients, develop coding or data-analysis skills, become a stronger scientific writer, or understand experimental design. Being able to communicate those interests gives a mentor a better sense of how they might help you grow.

In my experience, the more specific you are about what you are hoping to learn, the easier it is for a good mentor to help shape the experience around those interests.

Remember That You Are Also Evaluating the Mentor

This is one of the most important things I wish I had understood before my first PI meeting. It is easy to view the conversation entirely from the perspective of whether the PI wants you, but mentorship and personality fit can have an enormous effect on what you ultimately get from a research experience.

You will not be able to determine everything about a mentor from one conversation, but there are still things worth noticing. Do they seem enthusiastic about their work? Are they interested in teaching? Can you comfortably ask them questions? Do they seem approachable? Can you imagine eventually telling them that you do not understand something or that you think you may have made a mistake?

Those questions matter because research involves being confused, getting stuck, and making mistakes. You need to be able to ask for help.

One of the biggest green flags I noticed with my first mentor was simply that she was enthusiastic, kind, and easy to talk to. I did not fully understand at the time how valuable that would become. Later, we had weekly lab meetings and journal clubs where members of the lab presented papers and were pushed to think carefully about whether we really understood the methods, evidence, and conclusions.

I learned a tremendous amount simply by watching the way she read research. She was skeptical in a productive way and constantly questioned whether the evidence supported the conclusions being drawn. I was able to see how she evaluated the quality of scientific work, how she thought through experimental design, and how she developed her own research questions. That kind of mentorship is difficult to quantify, but it shaped the way I learned to think about research. 

Ask About What Students Actually Do

You do not need to come to a first meeting with a list of twenty detailed questions. Some logistical questions, such as exact meeting schedules or communication expectations, may make more sense later if you are seriously discussing joining the lab.

At an introductory meeting, I would focus more on understanding what the work and mentorship might actually look like. I might ask what the lab is currently working on, what undergraduates or new research assistants have done in the past, and who students typically work most closely with on a day-to-day basis.

I also think it is useful to ask how students’ responsibilities tend to change as they gain more experience. There is a big difference between a lab where students remain in the same limited role indefinitely and one where they can gradually take on more ownership as they demonstrate that they are reliable and capable.

Lastly, one question I always ask a PI in an introductory meeting is something along the lines of, “Are there any papers you would recommend I read to get more up to speed on this area?” Asking for literature they recommend shows that you are curious and self-motivated. It also gives you something concrete to follow up on after the meeting and often tells you a great deal about how the PI thinks about the field and which work they consider especially important.

You Can Care About Publications Without Making the Meeting Transactional

Premed students are often thinking about whether research might eventually lead to a publication, and I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with caring about that. Publications can reflect meaningful involvement in a project and are useful academic accomplishments.

I would not, however, walk into a first meeting and immediately ask whether you will get a paper. At that point, neither you nor the PI necessarily knows what your role will look like, how long you will stay, or what you will eventually contribute.

A better approach is to ask about the kinds of opportunities students have had in the past. If you genuinely enjoy writing, for example, you could say that you are interested in scientific writing and ask whether previous students have ever had opportunities to contribute to manuscripts or other writing projects.

The same approach applies to other interests. If you want to learn a particular method, work with patients, analyze data, or become involved in study design, ask whether students in the lab have had opportunities to do those things.

In my experience, good mentors are often willing to help students cultivate their interests, but they cannot do that if they do not know what those interests are.

The Most Prestigious Opportunity Is Not Necessarily the Best One

At one point, I almost chose a research opportunity in a quite prestigious, hard-to-get-into lab. The lab expected approximately fifteen hours a week, and at the time I was also very involved in advocacy work and circus, both of which mattered a great deal to me. Taking the position would have required me to give up a substantial amount of time for other parts of my life that I cared about.

I also learned that much of my initial work in the lab would involve data entry. There is nothing wrong with doing basic or tedious work when you first enter research; almost everyone does some of it. However, I knew that I wanted an opportunity where I could eventually take on more responsibility and learn more directly about how scientific questions were developed and investigated.

I ultimately chose another lab, and what I gained there is one of the reasons I now place so much value on mentorship. I was challenged to understand the methods, results, and conclusions of highly technical papers and explain my reasoning. I learned how my PI evaluated evidence and where she was skeptical. I watched how she approached experimental design and how she thought through her own questions. I had access to the way an experienced scientist thought about research.

For a first research role, I would generally prioritize strong mentorship. That does not mean a large lab with a PI who is very busy is necessarily a poor choice. A PI may be relatively unavailable while a postdoc or PhD student provides excellent day-to-day mentorship, and some students genuinely prefer working very independently.

Overall, I think the important question to consider is what your actual experience there is likely to be.

Your First Research Role Does Not Have to Be Perfect

Premed students can feel pressure to optimize every experience around how it will eventually appear on an application. It is easy to start asking whether a lab will lead to a publication, whether the PI is well known, or whether the topic perfectly matches the specialty you might eventually pursue.

Those considerations can matter, but I do not think they should be the primary reason you do research. There are so many different kinds of research that it is worth finding something that genuinely interests you. If you like interacting with patients, clinical research may be a good fit. If you want hands-on technical skills, you may prefer bench research. If you enjoy writing, data analysis, policy, qualitative research, or computational work, there are opportunities in those areas as well.

Your first research project also does not need to become the field you study for the rest of your career. My first research experience taught me many things that had little to do with the specific neuroscience questions we were studying.

When I took that first Zoom meeting from my dorm room, I thought I was trying to convince a PI to let me into her lab. Looking back, I was also meeting someone who would teach me how to interact with scientific work skeptically, question conclusions, think carefully about evidence, and approach experimental design. I could not have known all of that from one conversation, but I could tell that she was enthusiastic, kind, and someone I felt comfortable talking to. Those qualities turned out to matter enormously.

So prepare before the meeting, read enough of the work to have a meaningful conversation, think about what you hope to learn, and pay attention to the person you are meeting and the kind of environment they seem to create. At the end of the day, you are not only choosing a research project. You are also choosing someone who will shape the way you learn to think about research.

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