Doing postbaccalaureate research before graduate school

In the increasingly competitive space of PhD graduate school admissions, I decided to spend my gap year(s) working full-time as a postbaccalaureate (postbac) research scholar.

How did I discover research in the first place?

Quite honestly, I wanted to earn some money while going to school as I was fully funding myself during this time. Since I was eligible for work-study as part of my financial aid package, I looked for on-campus, work-study positions through Handshake. There I came across a zebrafish facility assistant position in the Dennis and Jao labs at the Genome Center. I remember during my first interaction with the lab's principal investigator (PI), Dr. Megan Dennis, she mentioned that undergraduate research positions usually open up during the summer/early fall quarter. Keeping that in mind, I reached out to her later that summer and expressed my interest in doing research. I was welcomed into the Dennis Lab at the start of the fall quarter that same year, and since then, I have fallen in love with working in the lab.

What was my main motivation for doing postbac research?

One day, as I was doing a shift in the zebrafish facility, I came across Natasha Mariano, a former UC Davis PREP scholar in the Dennis Lab. Through this interaction, I learned about the NIH Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP). Throughout my time as an undergraduate researcher, I knew I wanted to do a postbac not only because I wanted to gain additional technical skills but also to gain mentorship from faculty and current graduate students. The way I would describe the mentorship aspect I wanted to gain was learning about the “politics” of grad school, from learning how to approach mentorship relationships with PIs to finding fellowships and funding for graduate school. With this, I also wanted to hone my science communication skills through writing and speaking.

What was my application process like?

I applied to the NIH PREPs at UC Davis, UC San Francisco, and UC Berkeley and Stanford Medicine's Postbaccalaureate Experience in Research program.

I started writing my personal statements at the start of 2024 and worked on my application materials during the winter quarter. My advice is to have multiple drafts before submitting a final draft and have someone like a PI or a professor look at your drafts. I also requested my letters of recommendation about a month or two in advance.

I received interviews from UC Davis and Stanford. The UC Davis PREP interview was a Zoom session with a panel of interviewers, mostly faculty and program leadership. Stanford had a series of three one-on-one interviews: one with a Stanford Biosciences faculty, another with a current/former postbac research scholar, and lastly, with the program director.

In the current climate, are postbac research opportunities still available?

Unfortunately, due to cuts or cancellations in federal funding, I have seen postbac research programs downsize and/or completely stop accepting applicants for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, some postbac programs that I know of are still continuing to accept cohorts. There is no list of postbac programs anywhere online, and so here is a non-comprehensive list of programs that are still active as of October 2025.

Institution	Website
Stanford University	https://postbacs.stanford.edu/
UC Davis	https://prep.ucdavis.edu/
UC San Francisco	https://postbac.ucsf.edu/
UC Berkeley	http://cend.globalhealth.berkeley.edu/prep/
NIH Intramural Research Program	https://www.training.nih.gov/research-training/pb/pb/
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center	https://www.fredhutch.org/en/education-training/fred-hutch-postbaccalaureate-scholar-program.html
University of Chicago	https://biosciences.uchicago.edu/graduate-programs/cdmb-postbac
Oregon Health and Science University	https://www.ohsu.edu/postbaccalaureate-research-education-program

Cover photo courtesy: Gabe Barron