Emailing profs at other colleges

I know it’s early to be thinking about summer stuff, but it’s more productive for me to day dream about it now than other forms of procrastination from schoolwork. Hahaha

I’ve always been told that its a good idea to get a range of research experiences (especially applying for grad school later on). So I can’t spend every summer at the same lab I work at during the semester. I was researching profs and their research at other universities and there are lots of pretty damn cool things.

So next summer is it weird to email profs at University B like;

"Professor Smith,

Hi, I’m Bobby-Jim McVarnish and I’m an undergraduate at University A. I was researching summer programs and opportunities and I discovered your lab website. Your research sounds very interesting and relevant to my career pursuits. I was wondering if you are taking on summer undergraduates from other universities?"

Or is this just something that isn’t done? Should I just work in a different lab at my school to gain more varied experience?
Also, if University B is further away, I’d probably need some sort of pay to live in the city. I know some labs take on people for pay, but I’m not sure how I’d communicate this politely when contacting a prof.

Thanks for any advice and thanks for feeding my procrastination!

You can do that. But do you know about REUs? Research that avenue as well. There is a formal application process for those, and they do pay.

Also talk your professors now if that is something that is done and how to go about it.

Here is info about REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to work in your usual research lab. The more time you spend in one lab means you’re more likely to get publications - the true measure of research success and experience. Furthermore, you will need to write/discuss your research to apply to graduate schools and the more intimately you know your research, the better. Sometimes interviewers will grill you on it!

It is very common for undergraduates to summer somewhere other than their normal lab, and there are very good reasons for it. In fact, many professors will encourage it.

One of the best reasons is to expand your network. A letter of recommendation from one professor who has supervised your work - great. Two letters of recommendation from two separate professors who have supervised you in research? Better. You also prove that you can work in a lab across different settings and mesh with different people. You may get experience with techniques and processes that you don’t get at your home lab, and you may get access to equipment and research that’s not going on at home. Publications are quite rare for undergrads and I don’t think most of them should be chasing that - I mean, if it happens, that’s great, but it shouldn’t be a concrete must-have goal because you have to enter the lab when the time is just right and know enough to make a significant contribution to the paper. However, you can still get a publication or a presentation out of a summer research experience - I know a few undergrads who have done that.

If an undergrad does 2 years of research during the academic year at their home lab and then spends a summer or two at different labs, they’ll know their home research intimately enough to talk about it while also having a variety of experiences to recount and a wider network of people willing to write letters.

Here’s the thing, though, OP - you can’t wait until the summer. As you see from the REU website, summer student deadlines are usually between January and March of year you want to work somewhere else during the summer. The time to start contacting professors about this would be late October/early November through late March. Also, your email is too vague - you need to be a little more specific, like

Hi, I’m Bobby-Jim McVarnish, a sophomore undergraduate at Westeros University. I’m currently working in Professor Stark’s lab here at Westeros; we’re investigating [something super sciency and awesome here]. I’m really interested in your work on [something else really sciency and also great]; I enjoyed your paper on [briefly discuss a recent paper Professor X has written that you have actually read and liked]. I’d love to work in your lab next/this summer; do you take on summer undergraduates from other universities?"

Worded a bit better than I threw together here, but you get the idea. The professor will know that you need funding, or at least will usually ask you whether or not you do. if they don’t, no need to beat around the bush: directly ask them if they have funding for a summer student in a subsequent email. The worse you’ll get is “no” which is good, because you don’t want to show up and have no way to feed yourself.

Also, it’s not weird at all to do so, but many professors either don’t take summer students or don’t have the funding to take one even if they wanted to. Your best bet is to visit that REU website and apply to formal programs. You can also do an Internet search for things like “summer undergrad research [field]”, “SURF [field]”, “SROP [field]”, etc. (SURF and SROP are initialisms for summer programs.) The upside is that REU/SROP programs usually cover the student’s room costs for the summer and also pay them a decent stipend for food and fun, AND you are in a structured program with other people so you can meet other students in your field. One of my good friends is a person I met at a summer research program, oh jeez, 8 years ago when I was in college. Also if you’re a URM, look up the Leadership Alliance.