<p>I have volunteered in a biology research lab for a year during my undergraduate. The PI gave me an independent project to work on, which happened to be a really difficult project ( if any stage of the project did not work, it is back to square 1). </p>
<p>I made some progress through time, but was not able to complete the project. I gave up after a year, but the PI agreed to give me a LOR for graduate school.</p>
<p>My question is should I include this research experience in my SOP? Even if I do not include it in, I might be asked about it in the interview, since they will already have read my LOR.</p>
<p>If you put a positive spin on it and say what you got out of it / how it was a valuable experience regardless, it might be worth mentioning.</p>
<p>Especially since you worked on it for a year, you must have learned something – techniques, current literature, more about the field, etc. You don’t have to mention that it failed; however, if asked in an interview, you can say that while it led to a dead end, you got a lot out of it, including the lesson that science takes time and patience and that not every path leads to discovery. If you follow that by saying that you wish you had the time to explore another approach to the problem, that may be enough.</p>
<p>pssst. most research projects fail.</p>