Two Summer Research Interviews at Once? Drop the Exam Mindset First

You land two summer research interviews at the same time. Is your first reaction joy, or fear of offending both professors?

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

I recently saw a chat where a student asked a senior schoolmate exactly this. Two professors had replied to his cold emails and both scheduled interviews; he had emailed them almost a week apart. After the interviews, should he tell them the truth right away, or wait until it was time to sort out the visa? It was his first time in this situation, he said, and he was nervous about offending both.

The senior’s reply was practical. Tell them early, but you may want to first make sure one professor will take you, and have a good, friendly exchange with him, before telling the other. Waiting until the visa stage could cause a lot of trouble for the professor’s plans. And then: by the way, congrats on getting two interviews, that’s impressive.

All good tactical advice. What I want to talk about is why the student was so anxious in the first place.

When summer research first developed a few years ago, I think it was not something you could mass-apply to. The format, at bottom, is joining a professor’s project. If you sent applications everywhere, collected several offers and then turned professors down, that left a bad impression.

But as summer research gets more common, I think it will end up looking just like PhD admissions. You can talk to several professors, and professors can consider several students at once. It is a two-sided choice, with plenty of options on both sides. PhD admissions has worked this way for a long time: a student stays in touch with ten or twenty professors and declines most of them in the end, and nobody calls that disrespect.

So what this really asks of students is a shift. From the gaokao mindset, where schools pick students by one standard, the score, to a mindset of two-sided choice and trade-offs. To knowing how to choose when you face uncertainty.

The gaokao never posed this problem. The scores come out, the cutoffs come out, and you go wherever you are placed. The school doesn’t negotiate with you, and you don’t negotiate with it. Now the professor is choosing you, and you are choosing the professor.

Which means there is no single best option.

Professor A’s direction might be exactly what interests you. Professor B might have more papers, but a lab culture that doesn’t suit you. You have to weigh these yourself. Every choice gives something and costs something. None of them is the best. You get to choose the one that fits you best.

One more thing. Landing two interviews at once is itself a signal. Two professors think you are worth talking to, which means you are competitive in this market. That is not a problem. It is good news, and that is what the senior’s congratulations was about.

So next time this happens, don’t start by asking whether you’ll offend anyone.

Ask which opportunity fits your long-term development better. Then choose, accept the cost of the one you give up, and keep going.