>>12091700I'm a grad student and train all undergrads/grad students who join our lab, and give the yes/no on whether they should be allowed to join. Don't worry about intelligence, it means diddly squat outside of the question "are you actually retarded". Worry about work ethic instead.
Intelligence alone does nothing for you. Work ethic will take you anywhere you want to go, no matter intelligence.
I look for ~4-5 things (in order of important here) when I'm training someone.
1) Do they have a strong work ethic, and not wait until the last minute to try and do something?
2) Do they ask questions or do they just say "yeah I understand" in efforts to not seem incompetent?
3) Are they independent (linked with 1, often confused with 2. will they do shit without me telling them to, and ask questions as they run into stuff they don't know? Most independent undergrad I ever trained also asked 10x more questions than anyone else I've ever trained. She is far more prepared for grad school now than even I was).
4) Do they get along well with the rest of the lab (you are a hard NO for joining if you don't work well with the rest of the people in lab. My PI specifically fosters this environment because its great for productivity).
Notice I said little about intelligence. No one in sciences gives two shits about how smart you are. Its how much you can produce. You don't need intelligence to run assays, and if you are dumb, you can out-compete intelligent people just by working harder.
We've turned down some goddamn brilliant students because they just didn't do shit till the last minute and would slack off and it shows immensely in grad school.
Work ethic, IMO, is the only thing in life that matters.
