<p>Guys I think I asked something similar before but I need to ask you guys one more thing.
How did you guys start your first research experience? my professor told me to choose a research topic in the list and I chose "an analysis of electric and hybrid automobiles". After that, he told me to write a detailed proposal statement of what I exactly want to do bsed on this topic (Design?experiment?... etc). Honestly, I just wanted to get some experiences for better admission for grad school. Meaning, I haven't really thought about what I exactly wanted to do for the research (I thought professor was supposed to assign something for me based on this topic and he should be guiding me througout the process).</p>
<p>Mind telling me how I should deal with this situation?</p>
<p>The next step looks pretty obvious - do some reading on the topic, and see if you can identify an area of interest, and think about what would make a good proposal.</p>
<p>Sometimes professors have existing research projects for which they are looking for help. Your other option is to try to find a different professor at your school who is in that category. Poke around on the web pages for all of the professors, and see if anyone has a research grant and/or active research in an area that you are interested in.</p>
<p>thank you very much for the response and I would like to ask few more questions.
Does it matter even if I do a research which is different from what I’m gonna do in grad school? Let’s say I plan to study something related to automobile in grad school, but ends up doing research related to mechatronic (robotic) fields. Would it really matter? Is getting research experience regardless of how unrelated it is beneficial in getting to grad school?</p>
<p>For grad school admissions, it is better to have some research experience than to have none, regardless of how related the topic is. It is better still if the undergrad research experience is related to the expected grad research, but still useful if that isn’t the case.</p>