How competitive are research opportunities at Vanderbilt?

I’m thinking about attending Vanderbilt as a sophomore transfer, but I’m worried that due to my lack of research/lab work and the fact that I’m transferring in from business, along with the fact that I’ll probably only be average at best compared to my peers, could hurt my chances at securing summer research stipends or other research opportunities. Is there stiff competition for such opportunities?

Some info about me: I have a 3.92 college gpa, 4.0 HS GPA with good performance in STEM classes and on STEM AP’s (5 in Bio, Chem, and Calc), 1570 SAT CR+M. No prior lab or research experience.

Are you trying to get a summer research position for summer 2017, before you attend? It will be more difficult to get a position before actually being a student, but that’s just because as a student you’ll have more time/chances to connect with potential mentors and stuff. However, you could still probably find something this summer. Plenty of people do summer research here who go to other universities, so it really isn’t an issue that you aren’t a student yet. You just might have to send out a ton of emails, and I would start looking like now.

If you just mean for during the school year, I’d say you’re fine. There are tons of research opportunities and they aren’t that competitive; if you want one, you’ll get one. Labs pretty much just want to see that your GPA is reasonable (>3.5) and that you have some experience with science. It’s ok if you’re not currently a science major, I know econ majors who have done biomedical research.

@fdgjfg Thanks for the reply!

There are a few ways for summer stipends like VUSE and SyBBURE. Look into them.

I got a year round research assistantship job as work study in the weeks before I came to campus. I would look through the opportunities on HireADore and upload good quality materials - resume and cover letter - and you’ll be surprised what opportunities come back. My job was for graduate students, but I sent an enthusiastic application, spoke on the phone for a interview, and landed the position a week later. So just take that initiative that you were admitted to Vandy for and go for it! That’s my advice.

@fdgjfg : 3.5+? Really? Isn’t that a bit high? I am sure they take people below that provided that they have a strong course background and maybe something 3.3+. Like chemistry there for departmental honors only requires 3.4 in chem and a 3.3 overall. Admittedly, no matter the raw difficulty of majors, chemistry departments at most schools are much more traditional grading wise for STEM.

Even BSCI is 3.4: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/biosci/undergraduate/majors.php

While I would imagine most doing an honors thesis will have above or far above that, I would imagine there are a decent amount close to it or that they would not set the threshold at a point where folks cannot land a lab. Also, if I am a PI in a very specialized area, I would rather have the student between 3.3-3.5 that is accelerated/has taken courses or had experiences in the same or related areas (basically a tried and tested student) as opposed to the person who has a high GPA but has only completed intro. courses in a subject.

@Mukigachar I am more with @Senior2016M on this. If ambitious and you want a position and are solid academically (not necessarily even 3.5), just go for it. These level schools have so many opportunities available to you. As for being average…please, most people at an elite school may become relatively or more average academically versus the student body by definition. Often one’s performance in the classroom is not super related to say…a lab. You just want to do solidly enough so that you demonstrate some content background or interest in the area. This does not always mean being significantly above average grade wise: http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2017/01/student-performance-measures-don-t-perform

The point that those parameters (GPA and GRE) are still so hotly contested as viable metrics is revealing and most faculty likely know the pitfalls. In addition, many PhD programs in STEM straight up say how they pay attention to the last 3-4 semesters. This is because in terms of academic performance, are really more interested in trajectory and performance in more advanced special topics or graduate division courses in specified areas of interest (even if you are say pre-med, this is relevant because it says that often PIs are looking for something different than a med. school adcom for example)

A VU graduate student cohort was involved. Also, you may all be surprised that many of your professors were strong but were not super perfect academically. Some were really only okay. A lot of research productivity has to do with a mixture of technical skills (as well as improvisation) and of course creativity, something that undergraduate courses and standardized exams struggle to gauge (hell many undergraduate biological science courses still struggle to gauge much beyond recall, basic understanding, or simple applications).

Point is, do the best you can with your abilities academically, but definitely develop “grit” and initiative if you can. You need not be perfect or tops or even “decent” (if decent is a threshold like 3.5).

@bernie12

You’re right, 3.5 would probably be the highest cutoff for the big-name PIs who get a lot of interest but only take a few undergrads at a time, and want future honors thesis students who can function as de facto mini grad students rather than standard grunt workers. I just threw it out there because a past PI has told me that was their cutoff, but they fit in with the unique aforementioned situation.

Probably with a ~3.2 or higher, you could still find plenty of positions.

@fdgjfg : Don’t the big-name PIs often ask for references and experience in intermediate or upper division coursework there? I have rarely heard of big names from my institution asking about GPAs overall so much as performances and completion of specific coursework. Like I know in chemistry, there was a heavy bias of many organic faculty toward freshman ochem alums and a general bias and preference for those who hit somewhere in the B range of a top organic instructor or bchem. Biology, they typically liked some mixture of chemistry courses and an upper division or intermediated division course in a related area. In fact, many big names would recruit directly from their course as they were mainly interested in top performers in that specific area.

@bernie12 ehh. I know/am really good friends with all the undergraduates in Townsend and Rizzo’s labs, and I feel like it was more like only people in freshman orgo that actually ask to go to their labs(because they know both Rizzo and Townsend are super chill dudes and actually know about them) rather than them only accepting people from freshman orgo.

To be completely honest, I think its incredibly easy to get a research position at Vanderbilt if you’re willing to send emails and put yourself out there even as a freshman. If you have trouble, message me and I’ll give you the names of a few professors in biology and chemistry that I personally know are looking for undergraduates.

@AnnieBot : That’s kind of what I meant and pretty much ties into the recruitment I refer to (there exists a natural preference for them because they know of their performance/are more accessible, and technically may be viewed as a little more ambitious for taking such a “risk” though if pre-grad, this is much lesser so the case). I find what you say very believable. I think OP need not worry.

Also, I never asked, but I hear Townsend is definitely one of the more challenging, if not the most challenging of ochem instructors. Was he basically using some problems more similar to his Princeton (I think either that or Columbia is where he came from) group meetings or something? If so, they could really use someone like that teaching sophomores…because those sections may as well be biology courses.

@bernie12 Oh yeah. They were hard af ( Townsend went to Columbia). His freshman orgo class final was probably the hardest test I’ve ever taken at Vandy and I’ve finished the majority of my BME classes and all the premed requirements(including biochem and genetics for my state med school). I still did really well with the curve, but the actual numerical grade I received wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t really that it tested super complicated material, but more, dare I say, creativity and problem solving.

I like to say there are two types of questions I miss. One kind where after you see that you miss it, you call it BS and rant because it was truly a" stupid" question , and the other where you look at the correct answer and am like " wow. I thought I really understood the material, but I definitely didn’t.". Townsend was the latter. His tested critical thinking in a way that also built upon the reactions you learn in the unit. You could literally memorize the book, and still do really bad on his tests if you couldn’t apply the reactions in creative ways, or understand the “flow” of electrons each reaction presented itself in. But in the end, I felt that his tests were very fair. I cannot praise the man’s teaching enough. Really made me look at learning/science in a different way.

I would say Townsend is probably the most qualified to teach sophomores, but tbh I think he likes teaching freshman orgo and wouldn’t switch if he had the chance- he has a class of probably the most motivated, smartest students at Vandy, who are looking to prove themselves in what was told was a “hard” science course. We love him. He loves us. Who wouldn’t want to teach a class like that?

@AnnieBot : My freshman ochem instructor sounds exactly like that (I’ll show you via PM) and has taught sophomores for the past 5 years and is finally going back to teaching AP 4/5 freshman (plus very motivated folks willing to take without the AP credit) and he can’t wait. I understand where he is coming from. It is kind of drop down to teach students who mostly are taking it for a requirement. Luckily my instructor got an okay self-selection bias when teaching sophomores so it helped, but it still isn’t the same.