<p>I'm sure there are anecdotal cases where an UG has done "substantive" research, but wow. That's normally the role of grad students and post-docs (which begs the question "Why pay a grad student or post-doc when one can get an unpaid UG to do the work?" or even "Why go to grad school when I can do essentially the same work as an UG?"). My D did her med school research internship this past summer. On day one the PI handed her four books and thirty-two research papers in his field and said "Let's discuss these Friday." Of course, YMMV.</p>
<p>Jolynn >>> JL50ish--son just applied to U of AL & filled out the scholarship app info. We didn't see anything about applying for the Computer-Based Honors Program, though. Is that something you'd apply to separately, after admission? Thanks much for the helpful info! (btw, son will be thrilled re: the attractive women part of it...he almost applied to James Madison because the girls were rumored to be 'beautiful'--minimal comp sci program sidetracked that plan...).<<<<</p>
<p>The</a> University of Alabama Honors College UA has 3 honors programs. Your son needs to apply to UHP and CBH. He needs to apply to UHP, just in case he doesn't get accepted into CBH (they get hundreds of apps from all over the country for the CBH program). He needs to be in at least on honors program so he can get all the honors benefits - dorms, early registration, etc. Click on the application form, fill it in, and submit it.</p>
<p>Because of your son's stats, he'll be automatically admitted to UHP as long as he fills out the application</p>
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Do you think that's equally true (undergraduates don't get to do much research) at a smaller school such as RPI (about 5,000 undergrads, about 7,000 total students [including all graduate students]) as it is at a larger school such as UCSD?
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I don't know - it's something worth discussing at the particular schools but often there are 'more' research opportunities at the larger research schools like UCSD.</p>
<p>To be frank though, UG CS students don't really know enough to be able to do much 'research' at least in the first few years. CS students are usually slammed just to do the work required to get the degree. It's a rigorous major that requires a lot of work and a heavy schedule as we've already discussed on some other threads. On top of that by the summer before third year many of them will start to do internships (paid :)) to gain additional real-world experience.</p>
<p>I'm sure there are some exceptions to the 'research' statement above but realistically I don't know how substantive their contribution would be given their limited knowledge in the first few years. There's a 'lot' to learn in a CS major.</p>
<p>My son didn't go to RPI but all the kids we talked to there said it was very easy to do research there if you wanted to. We had a friend whose daughter was in biology. She did research with a professor there every summer. I don't know if she also did stuff during the school year. She also graduated in three years and is now a grad student at Cornell. She didn't love RPI, but it served her well.</p>
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My son, a 19 year old sophomore, is doing research with a Neonatologist regarding newborns, birth weights, etc.
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I was referring to doing research in the CS field - not all fields. I think there's just too much to learn in the CS field to get to the point where they could possibly do substantive research in at least the first 2-3 years. That said, I'm sure there's a way they could participate in some research but I wouldn't expect their contribution to be high.</p>
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<p>My son, a 19 year old sophomore, is doing research with a Neonatologist regarding newborns, birth weights, etc. <<<</p>
<p>I was referring to doing research in the CS field - not all fields. I think there's just too much to learn in the CS field to get to the point where they could possibly do substantive research in at least the first 2-3 years. That said, I'm sure there's a way they could participate in some research but I wouldn't expect their contribution to be high.<<<<</p>
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<p>Oh... I was referring to the research my son is doing in his Computer-Based Honors program. He's coding in Java.</p>
<p>Thanks for that information! Not sure what son wants/hopes to do w/the research thing---I know he wants to get a substantive learning experience in his major, however that would best play out. I think he likes the big facilities in part because it looks like they will be doing interesting work there, thinking about new ideas, etc. & maybe he'd be a part of it.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, JL50ish! What's a little nerve-racking is they ask for 'unweighted gpa' (on a 4.0 scale) which doesn't look as good for son (3.01) as compared to his weighted (4.5). Interesting work your son is doing, btw. My son enjoys Java too--taught himself this summer.</p>
<p>When my son applied, we "ignored" that "on a 4.0 scale" and put his weighted score. No one ever said a thing.... </p>
<p>Does it say "unweighted" or just 4.0? I thought it just said 4.0... When we put our son's weighted score in, it may have "corrected" to 4.0. IF it did, we just left it like that.</p>
<p>ucsd-ucla dad, that makes sense, but I expect a CS kid who really wanted to do research could do computer programming for one of the other departments. For example, my kid helped his Dad with some programming for modelling diffusion from a pipette and did some other programming for another prof that analyzed protein databases. This was when he was still in high school.</p>
<p>Thanks, JL50ish!! Whew, that would make all the difference, for son. I know you posted a link to a U of AL webpage that said they look at the highest score on the transcript (& son's weighted 4.5 is on the transcript) so I wouldn't feel bad about him putting that down.</p>
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ucsd-ucla dad, that makes sense, but I expect a CS kid who really wanted to do research could do computer programming for one of the other departments. For example, my kid helped his Dad with some programming for modelling diffusion from a pipette and did some other programming for another prof that analyzed protein databases.
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Yes - I don't think I was very clear. I was referring to research within the CS field as opposed to using some programming skills to help other researchers in various fields. </p>
<p>My D also 'participated in research' by writing some applications to help researchers in a non-CS related area. </p>
<p>Research within the CS field could be developing new algorithms for graphics applications, new techniques to encapsulate data, development of new encryption algorithms, etc.</p>