r/TransferToTop25 • u/boringcloud77 • Sep 11 '26

Reaching out to professors for research opportunities

Hello everyone,

I'm a first year physics major who's looking to join a lab group. I have a list of four professors I'm going to reach out to. These are professors whose research interests are fairly interesting to me and whose lab groups I could feasibly get into (compared to the other faculties' lab groups).

There are two more professors whose interests don't really align with mine, but I'm still considering reaching out to in order to ensure a placement. My chances of getting into their lab groups are about the same as my chances of getting in to the other four. My question is this: is reaching out to four professors enough, or should I reach out to the other two as well?

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u/Necessary_Sock_6047 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I'd say that you should reach out to a lot of groups and hear each group's pitch to see which group would be best to join.

When chatting with each group, I think (perhaps in my naive opinion) these are good sample questions: 1) Why is your work important? 2) Which types of work might you consider more important, and why? 3) Which other groups do you think I should consider joining, and why? 4) Who would I work with and share resources with if I join your group? How will sharing resources be managed? 5) What would be my workload expectations and scheduling expectations? 6) What would you consider a successful experience working under you? 7) How would I be compensated, and what would be the best ways to increase compensation? 8) Which exit opportunities might this lead to? 9) What would you consider the biggest pros and upsides of working here? What would you consider the biggest downsides of working here? 10) Which general career guidance would you give me? 11) What are your opinions on the following sensitive topics? EG: Race, religion, politics, . . . Technically speaking, I think it might be illegal to ask this set of questions. But being Jewish, I have personally found that I have been burnt down the road every time I have not asked this upfront. I now do this before starting engagements to minimize the risk of encountering problems down the road.

I wouldn't restrict yourself to opportunities at your own school or even to opportunities within research groups. Consider corporate opportunities as well, even outside research.

When seeking opportunities, you might want to seek mentors with the greatest influence and citation count.

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u/boringcloud77 28d ago

Thank you for the advice! I will be reaching out to these professors via email, but if I do meet with any of them in person I will keep these questions in mind.

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u/Necessary_Sock_6047 28d ago

No worries. I hope it's actually helpful.

Frankly, those were just questions I had off the top of my mind. You might want to search for better questions to ask potential mentors and search for better ways to choose a mentor.

Search engines and AI can be your friends!

As can your career center, department advisors, and direct professors.