<p>I am currently at UCR, and have applied to transfer to UC Berkeley. Stanford requires a long academic research paper to be submitted with the app. But I have never heard of any undergraduate taking on such an enormous research paper.
Are we supposed to be researching with a professor? Or writing an honors thesis?</p>
<p>My main question is how an undergraduate would write a paper of that length in the first place.</p>
<p>You have a few options:</p>
<p>1.) Write an honors thesis that falls within that page range.</p>
<p>2.) Take a paper your wrote for a previous class, lengthen it, and polish it up.</p>
<p>3.) Submit a collection of shorter papers. (The site says this is allowed, though I actually do not recommend this myself.)</p>
<p>4.) Write one up from scratch. It sounds challenging, but with proper guidance and support from professors, it is completely possible. </p>
<p>20 pages isn’t that long. With a good topic, you’ll probably find out that you need more than 20 pages to say what you want.</p>
<p>
This is the approach I recommend. Writing a senior thesis is a great introduction to research, and if it’s good enough, presenting it at a conference (usually one geared toward graduate students or young scholars is best) can give you a taste of what academia is like. </p>
<p>Deadlines for PhD programs are often in December or even before, so although theses generally aren’t due until the spring, you’d have to write 20 solid pages before that deadline.</p>
<p>Doing an independent study, which usually culminates in a 15-20 page paper, is another way of getting a writing sample. This has the additional bonus of allowing you to work closely with a faculty member – remember that recommendations are extremely important in graduate admissions!</p>