I was waitlisted at UROP, and I don’t want to depend upon an acceptance.
I’m wondering how I can get better research opportunities, particularly in health/life sciences.
Thank you!
Join some health/life sciences oriented student organizations, get to know the upperclassmen who can potentially provide referrals. Try to get to know your professors.
When did you receive your notification? As a result of the May deadline or was it the June deadline?
I research in a wet chemistry lab. All I did was look through the department faculty page and email five professors whose research seemed interesting. It’s that easy a lot of the time.
May, the early deadline.
I tried emailing a bunch of professors, but none responded.
Yeah, emailing individual professors can be a way to do it. Some won’t ever respond, that’s fairly normal. In addition, a good number of professors won’t even be checking their umich email during the spring/summer months.
When you email professors…you can’t be like…help me, I need you! They don’t care. They’re not your parent or your highschool bio teacher. You have to do your homework. Read all of their papers. Study up on what they’re into. Come up with something complex and intelligent to say about something they’re interested in. Ask thoughtful questions. If they’re doing research…research the crap out of the topic so you can sound like you care. Invite them to coffee or ask if you can stop in on their office hours to chat. First thing my kid did when she got to UMich, was look for a lab job. They don’t hand them out. You have to inquire, apply, get invited to interview, and wow them. For her…she wrote solid letters, interviewed well…and the fates lined up just right… and she got a lab job the first week of school. And then she did that lab job well. Washing lab dishes. Emptying trash. Autoclaving the garbage. Filling fluids with giant heavy carboys. Doing the really awful work that no one wants to do. She was put in charge of a fruit fly colony. She learned everything possible about successfully raising fruit flies. She cleaned and organized the bug room, updated the lab manual on keeping bugs…did things well and impressed her boss. She was finally given tasks to help researchers. Learned new skills. Learned about the research her lab was doing. By the next year…she had a good reputation as a solid employee. Her lab offered to sponsor her for Urop…so she did Urop her Sophomore year. She was able to get a full-time lab assistant job over the summer at a biological station with her experience and references. Junior year, she returned to her lab and coordinated with her lab manager to do a mentored research credit project her senior year. She was also able to get a reference that got her an REU position for the summer. At graduation, she’ll have four years of working for her lab at UMich, and three years of summer lab work at the biological station, and the REU at a great lakes research station. Her lab friends and contacts have been among her most valued mentors. They are her UMich family. They’re also a hell of an employment reference, and grad school reference. My advice: get a lab job. Work hard. Do the crappy work so people appreciate you. Show gratitude. Network. Ask to attend lab meetings. Go see speakers your lab is interested in. Bring bagels/cookies/baked goods to share.