Hey all! I just received an opportunity to do research with a faculty member in my school’s English department (one of my other majors) and the opportunity sounds really interesting! However, I don’t plan on going to grad school for English, rather Sociology/Public Policy, but I know having research experience in undergrad is important for grad school admissions. So even though I would be doing research in a field I don’t intend on going into, is this a situation where any research is good research? Thanks!
It certainly wouldn’t hurt! Can you find a way to make the research intersect with the work you want to do in sociology/public policy? English can be a very cross-disciplinary field, so it might be worth looking into. Even if you can’t find some direct overlaps, you’ll be gaining skills that will help prepare you for graduate school.
Awesome! Hopefully I’d be matched with a professor doing research in cultural studies/race in literature since my public policy interests revolve mostly around race. Either way, the prospect of being involved with research of any type sounds unbelievably cool.
Well, there you go! That’d be awesome if you were matched with that professor and would be a great thing to talk about in your personal statement. But, you’re right – either way, it sounds like a cool opportunity! 
It does sound cool! But as a social scientist, I will say that no, any research is not necessarily the kind of research you want/need for a PhD.
The methods and approaches that a literature scholar uses are VERY different from the methods and approaches a social scientist uses. As a sociology researcher, you might conduct surveys, ethnographic research, and/or interviews, and have to learn the analysis methods (statistics, grounded theory, etc.) and theories behind those methods. Generally speaking, scholars of literature don’t do that kind of research, and so you may be very immersed in some kind of textual analysis or literary criticism without knowing the methods that a brand-new sociology PhD student would be expected to no.
Some research is better than nothing, but you really should try to get experience with a social scientist. You will be competing with other students who DO have experience with sociologists and other social scientists.
The exception would be if you are interested in some intersectional area - like cultural literature or literature of sociology or something like that.
Also might depend on what area of English, too. I’m in composition and rhetoric and I’d say our research methods are closer to social science methods – we do interviews and observations, conduct surveys, collect and work with data, etc. A lot of my professors have even recommended that I take a stats class at some point to help with the kind of data I may have to handle in the future.
So, if the kind of research will be the more social science-influenced, that might be even more useful for you.
The research I will be doing is focused on violence at the US/Mexico border. No word yet on how exactly literature plays a role in this (so, for example I won’t be doing literary criticism) but I am very passionate about immigration as a policy area. Regardless of this experience, I do plan on doing research abroad next summer in government/anthropology and will be writing my undergraduate thesis in sociology as well, so hopefully I get a good amount of social science research in.
Hey, I remember you! You were one of the first people I responded to after making an account here back when you were trying to decide what college to choose. I’ve thought about you a couple of times and hoped you were doing well. How did your first year go?!
I can’t give you any specific feedback on how beneficial this would be when applying to grad school for Sociology/Public Policy, but this sounds like an exciting opportunity to do some research on something you are truly passionate about. Who knows? This might lead you down a road toward something even more exciting. Stranger things have happened. That’s the great thing about college. If you keep an open mind, you have the opportunity to meet so many interesting people and try so many interesting things, and sometimes one of those people or one of those things can change the trajectory of your life ways you never could have imagined.
You just finished your freshman year, so you still have time to do other research later, right? Unless you have a better alternative, I don’t see how you have much to lose.
Wishing you all the best.