<p>I was accepted to JHU Early Decision and am excited to be a neuroscience major and premed. I am most excited about doing research in college but I've never done any before. Is there anywhere that says things that JHU/colleges in general are expecting from researching students or what professors look for in students that want to be part of their research? I know that you don't officially need any research experience and that they know that many students are new to it, but if there's anything I can read to be better prepared for researching, that would be great.</p>
<p>I think most college professors who take undergrad’s know they are getting someone who really knows nothing about research, and are basically looking to identify students who appear to be responsible and follow directions well.</p>
<p>If you really want to try and make yourself more appealing without access to actual research experience, I think the most important things would be to learn basic statistics and to learn the concepts behind some of the basic laboratory techniques commonly used by many labs across various fields of study (e.g. PCR, gel electrophoresis such as western/northern/southern blotting, bacterial transformation, flow cytometry, immunofluoresence, and ELISA.) Even though you wouldn’t know the actual protocol for doing any of these, if you understand generally what’s involved and how they’re used, you’ll be head and shoulders above most 1st time lab volunteers. These are the types of things taught in intro lab courses and you can read about them in any college level textbook, wikipedia, or always try your hand at reading scientific papers - but I’d probably stick to textbooks or wikipedia at your level.</p>
<p>Additionally, if your high school offers statistics or if you want to self study it, a basic stat’s background (e.g. knowing how to calculate means and standard deviations, T tests, chi square etc) is always appealing in a volunteer</p>
<p>What a research lab expects from a lab newbie:</p>
<p>1) follow any directions given to you exactly. If you’re unclear about what you’re supposed to do, ask for clarification. Please don’t guess.</p>
<p>2) be willing to undertake any task given to you even if it seems menial. This is also called being good team player.</p>
<p>3) be willing to go above and beyond e.g. reading relevant papers about topics the lab is working on and developing sufficient background knowledge so that when you ask questions, they aren’t stupid questions.</p>
<p>4) if you are scheduled to come into to the lab and can’t make for any reason, please notify your PI (or whomever you report to) that you won’t be in as soon as you know you won’t be able to come in. (Because this means someone else may have to be shifted to cover your duties in your absence.)</p>
<p>It’s pretty hard to recommend specific reading materials to prepare you because you don’t have any idea what area of neuroscience you may end up working in. But as brown says stats, and other data analysis skills are always useful. I would add learning how to use MatLab software and how to write MatLab scripts.</p>
<p>i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown, I’m currently enrolled in AP Stat, so that should help. I’ll keep your advice in mind and take some more advanced stat courses in college though. And I’ll review the lab skills I learned in AP Bio because I can’t remember the blotting techniques and I’ve never heard of some of the ones you’ve mentioned. Thanks! </p>
<p>WayOutWestMom, thanks for the tip about MatLab! I’ll learn more about it. By the way, I’m interested in autism but also in cancer (so in neuro, I guess that means brain cancer).</p>
<p>One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet, which is perhaps the most important quality to have when trying to be accepted into a lab, is you need to show the professor that you are interested in doing research with them PURELY because you have a deep interest and passion for neuroscience, and specifically the goals of that lab. you DO NOT want to come across as the biggest reason you are interested in doing research with them is to put it on your med school application.</p>
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<p>Excellent point that I forgot.</p>
<p>With regard to “specific to that lab” though. It’s ok to acknowledge that you’re interested in topics broader than the lab, but the part about making it clear you’re not doing this just for med school is critical. Nothing say “I’m not willing to work hard at this stuff” like saying you’re only doing it for your resume.</p>
<p>D2 graduated with a dual math & neuroscience degree May 2012. She’s did research in college in both cognition and neuro-oncology. She’s now doing research in pain perception and addiction at Top 10 medical school. (And starts med school this fall.)</p>
<p>She used/uses MatLab a lot to run data analyses.</p>
<p>Yes, I was never solely interested in research just for resumes…For years my goal was to do research long before I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I love the idea of discovering new things and I’d only do so with a lab whose work intrigued me. To appeal to such labs, I want to make sure that I can present myself as a prepared candidate. </p>
<p>Speaking of which…when you write emails to profs to assist in their labs, do you just say why you’re interested/like their work and ask to work with them? Is there anything else I should mention in those emails? </p>
<p>I’ll see if I can become fluent with MatLab before college starts.</p>
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<p>Definitely explain why you want to work for that particular lab. Tailor each email so it’s lab-specific.</p>
<p>You’ll also need to include a resum</p>
<p>WOWM, not to reinforce the stereotype of competitive premeds, but what about all the other kids who do research during the first semester? If I don’t start until after, won’t I have less experience and be behind them? I’m sure not everyone who starts first sem. has grades that suffer…</p>
<p>“Behind” is a fairly meaningless concept for research. Research isn’t a race. While saying you have 800 hours of research looks impressive, it isn’t unless those hours are spent meaningfully. It’s quality, not quantity.</p>
<p>It’s better to have 100 hours spent on developing an original idea into a project, creating your own experimental design, writing your own protocols and doing your on data analysis than it is to spend 800 hours doing low level tech stuff under the direction of someone else.</p>
<p>And yes, there are pre-meds who do their 15 hours/week in the lab, have active social lives, great grades and spend time doing a half dozen interesting ECs, but there are many more pre meds who over-commit their first semester and have to spend the next 7 semesters doing GPA repair. Remember you’re moving into a big pond that is full of sharks. A little caution may be in order, especially if you decide to commit to participating in your sport.</p>
<p>Also one thing I might mention is that, some professors, depending on the type of research they do, might not accept first semester Freshmen because to really understand their research, they might want you to take a course in neurobiology, or computational biology. This is not always true, but I remember from a neurobiology class I take that neuroimaging research for example with functional magnetic resonance imaging requires the knowledge of NMR.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s true too. D2’s neuro-oncology lab required a minimum of 3 semesters of calc plus linear algebra to even be considered. (They did lot of heavy-duty computer modeling.) Her cognition lab used fMRI extensively and everyone had to have completed general chemistry to join.</p>
<p>Another thing profs sometimes do is when you ask to join their lab, they’ll send 2 or 3 seminal papers about what the labs does, ask you to read them, then come in and discuss them with the PI so she can check your level of understanding of the material. (Kind of like an audition.)</p>
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<p>This is exactly what I was talking about in your other thread. For example when I applied to MD/PhD programs I had only 2 summers and 1 school year of research but I had 2 papers (1 first author) and a textbook chapter (also 1st author).</p>
<p>Now publications are also luck and in fact many of my classmates didn’t have any or didn’t have any 1st author ones. That’s why the programs interview you because that’s how you tell between the kids who know what they are doing and the ones who don’t.</p>
<p>I would definitely also recommend holding off until after 1st semester, potentially even after the 1st year.</p>
<p>Sorry for taking so long to respond…so many tests this week :(</p>
<p>WayOutWestMom, “GPA repair” was an amazing way to put it…thanks for the reality check! A few extra hours of research I pick up from the first semester won’t be nearly as helpful as getting my grades together will ultimately be. I’m remembering how helpful it was to have solid grades in 9th and 10th grade of HS…next to impossible to make up for those if you blow it.
Thanks for the tip about the lab papers…I’ll be sure to pay careful attention to those. </p>
<p>Jweinst1, I’ll keep that in mind…I’m sure any teacher who doesn’t want a freshman will tell me that when I ask. Thanks for letting me know about NMR…adding it to my to-learn list :)</p>
<p>i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown, WOW. How did you manage to be first author in so many things? Even a chapter in a real textbook? Amazing. How do you know which labs to pursue that would lead to you having such large opportunities? I mean I know the most important thing is to choose one you’re interested in, but is that it? </p>
<p>Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>Ask current students. My D. got infor from her friend and all it took her to email person in charge, interview and she was interning in area of her interest (actually also in Neuro, D. had Neuro minor) for 3 years, she started in the second year. Her interview was mostly for fun, they were discussing her Music minor / piano experinces. This relationship was significant all thru graduation. The person eventually nominated D. and her classmates at the the lab. for Phy Betta Kappa and wrote great LORs.
I do not beleive that publications are needed, but maybe for MD/PhD, not familiar with the requirements. D. dud not have any publications, she is working on it now in Med. School. It is very very hard to publish. In UG, D. had just poster presentation. One great experience was to personally writing proposal for rResearch grants and receiving couple of them.
I second suggestion to wait until 2nd year.</p>
<p>ugh, last night I didn’t have time to post so I left the window open. Just now I wrote this whole long detailed thing and when I hit submit it said I had timed out and so I lost all of it.</p>
<p>I don’t have time to rewrite it all, the gist is that pubs were mostly due to luck at having the opportunity to write them. I picked mentors more so than the science they were doing and by doing so, I picked people who actively wanted me to have my own project, take control of it, and publish it. They were both dedicated to teaching/mentoring undergraduates. I know several professors who list their mentees on their CV as accomplishments (it’s funny to see myself on my old boss’s CV, but if you’re interested in training UGs, having people who then go on to top 20 MD/PhDs is just as much their accomplishment as it is yours) because there are plenty of brilliant scientists who are awful mentors.</p>
<p>Wow. Totally different from D2’s experience with her undergrad PI. Her PI was thrilled to have her, helped D2 to get grant funding to pay for D2’s summer salary at the end of sophomore year, let D2 use her lab facilities (including some very expensive & time-sensitive equipment) to run her own research project, wrote super enthusiastic LORs for summer research programs at other institutions (even though the PI really wanted D2 to stay and work for her in the summers), offered D2 a full time paid position as lab manager/supervisor after graduation (which D2 declined), wrote an outstanding LOR for med school even though she had hoped D2 would go PhD or MD/PhD. And after all this, the PI just recently offered D2 a [paid] research fellowship with her lab should D2 decide to matriculate at the med school associated with D2’s undergrad university.</p>
<p>Am I missing something? How was your d’s experience totally different than mine? Sounds pretty similar…unless your implying that at her school all the PIs want UGs. At brown, UG research is very strongly encouraged, but I don want to promise that for JHU which in particular has stronger phd programs than brown and might be more graduate oriented (eg like Harvard). So if you’re asking me how to choose a mentor, make sure it’s someone who wants to develop you as a scientist, not just use you as a free/cheap set of hands or pass you off to a post doc/grad student.</p>
<p>No I was contrasting D2’s experience with Ace’s S’s not-so-positive experience–a post that seems now to have been deleted.</p>