Anyone get the April 9th SAT results?
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Great info. Thanks. I think he should probably see what he is getting into but I agree that now maybe too soon.
I am a social/behavioral scientist in the health sector at a T20 university and my undergraduate research assistants do a range of stuff that you might not think sounds very sexy, rigorous, or âresearchyâ. Lots of chasing down data sources and cleaning/organizing the data. Literature searches. Running studies (with humans) that probably feel like the equivalent of watching mice play. Tedious preparation and submission of protocols. And yes, sometimes arranging my travel, making copies for classes, proofreading a presentation, etc. as I donât have other resources to support that stuff. Itâs all research!
@Itisatruth Are undergraduates ever offered authorship on publications? I did such tasks as an undergraduate (running experiments, doing literature searches) but was not offered publication. Any light you can shed on this is appreciated.
@Octagon All the time. I rarely publish a paper without one or more undergrad co-authors, and several have published first-authored papers while in my lab. When I submit my CV internally for annual appraisal, I actually have to underline all student co-authors on paper citations to demonstrate mentorship and training.
I will say that norms for student co-authorship vary a ton by academic discipline. I try to err on the side of inclusive authorship but many colleagues in my field and adjacent fields have higher/stricter standards for what merits authorship. Journals also have guidelines.
Regarding the research discussion, and apologies I have not read it all carefully.
In the sciences, if you want to go to grad school, getting real research experience is important. My son just finished applying for PhD programs in biophysics. He had to write about his research experience as well as his research goals. This is a key part of the application as it shows that a student really understands how research is done and is committed to another 5+ years of this type of work. Also, this research leads to the reference letters which are also very important. Getting strong letters of recommendation from the professors you worked with goes a long way. My son was advised that these two things are more important than grades (although grades should be good as well). Having research experience also helps you to identify schools/labs where you might want to work in the future. At one of his interviews, the professor said, âyou have a letter from XX and thatâs all I need to know.â The professors in these fields know and respect each other.
My son began college with NO research experience. Freshman year he applied for a freshman research grant at his school (Yale). This grant allowed him to work in a professorâs lab and get paid while getting critical experience. He worked closely with a Ph.D student in the lab. This work later led to authorship on a publication. He continued working in this lab for credit throughout sophomore year. At this point, he had enough experience to apply for outside jobs, and worked in a big pharma lab is sophomore summer. He wanted to try something different. This was a paid job and paid much more than the university lab. Junior year he switched labs at school and continued to do research for credit every semester. During his junior summer, he was paid to work in this same lab. This gave him three very different research experiences and three strong letters of recommendation. He just told me he is an author on another paper being submitted from his current lab.
I just finished a bunch of tours with DD20 and nearly every school bragged about the % of kids doing research. For my daughter who is interested in business, this doesnât ring as true for her. It actually makes her think a school is STEM focused, even though they make sure to say that research doesnât have to mean in a lab. As far as it being âeasyâ to get a lab job, Iâm sure it varies a lot. In my sonâs case, since he was able to get funding, it was not hard to find a professor and a project to work on.
Thanks for the great information @Itisatruth
@Musicmom2015 - Yes at every campus tour they suggested how easy it would be to do undergraduate research. Granted these were all top notch places but how to really know? Many gave no statistics to back up what they were saying.
I highly recommend making appts as an individual (vs. going with a group during regular tours) with depts to discuss research opportunities. The schools where research is targeted and available to UGs will be happy to accommodate and take students on tours of their labs, talk about research students have done, what grads of their dept are now pursuing, etc. If a dept dismisses the question or passes it off as saying that UGs work for grad students, I would personally not want my student to attend that school. My kidsâ research professors have been invaluable mentors.
My kids research experiences havenât been âthrilling,â but they have been on target with their field. They havenât been washing beakers or making photocopies. Our oldest worked on stress tests with concrete in freezing and earthquake experiments. (His mentor professor was a key researcher in different concrete compositions in construction.) Physics ds spend most of his on-campus research time working with the Ice Cube project doing data analyses of neutrinos and muons. He spent 100s of hours writing programs and crunching data. Both of them did presentations, etc with their data. Not sure what language ddâs research is actually going to entail.
Reading research has also been a huge part of all of their research experiences. 100s of pages of research articles read for background info in order to be âbriefedâ on what it is that they are expected to know in order to do what they need to do. (I know dd just read over 450 pages!)
Descriptions of research being boring for periods of time, and having to do menial tasks, and then being crazy busy sounds like pretty much any job Iâve. ever had. :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:
In our experience at a large research university, labs in all disciplines are eager to bring students in as early as possible but, just like any other opportunity, the onus is on the student to seek it out and apply. If a lab brings in a freshman or sophomore, they will potentially have that student for several years. Similar to what you would find in the work force, students (regardless of year in school) usually start with basic tasks and are given more responsibility the longer that they work in the lab. Students donât get paid but receive units/credit for working.
Students sometimes feel that more is better and bounce from lab to lab (similar to how people bounce from job to job) rather than showing longevity, commitment, growth and responsibility in one lab. Labs also have to work around student schedules. One semester/quarter a student might have 3-4 hour blocks of time in their schedule and the next semester they might not.
Personally, I encourage my kids to spend first semester getting used to college classes, making friends, joining clubs, etc. During that first semester (or year), I want them to figure out how much time they can commit to working in a lab while still keeping their grades up. Time on campus also allows them to figure out the reputations and realities of different labs. My son interviewed for four labs and got offers from three. If he was just choosing based on research topic, he might have chosen Lab A but that lab had him working under a graduate student and rarely seeing or interacting with the professor. He chose Lab C where the professor has weekly âall labâ meetings and where the professor often hosts the students for dinner at his house.
@Nicki20 my daughter got her SAT results today.
Also, for all of you with kids entering college with no research experience, have faith! I may have mentioned this, but my D17 switched gears senior year of HS and decided she wanted to pursue medical research. She had no research experience in HS. She targeted colleges where she would be the âbig fishâ (read: merit), and where she would have definite research opportunities. She ended up at a uber-large OOS school, in a lab day 1 learning bench skills in a microbio lab. That allowed her to win a position over her first summer, with stipend but not an REU, at a large hospital in a more clinical setting, which she LOVED, and her PIs loved her. She will be an author on their pub. That then allowed her to apply for the Goldwater Scholarship at her university, which she was nominated for. While she didnât win, she will have another chance to apply for it next fall, and has additional work lined up for this summer at a T20 school. She is also joining a new lab next fall at her (not T20 lol) college that is more in the area of her interest. It can be done, but it definitely takes workâŠ
@Nicki20 D20 got hers back. Will send her December score! 
Iâve gotten two emails in 24 hours saying that applications at the respective schools are about to open. Itâs about to get real.
@tutumom2001 Wow! I am not there yet. Seems too early.
My D20 got an email last week encouraging her to go ahead and apply to a small, regional school in our area. Theyâve opened up their applications already!
How many of your kids have created Common App accounts?
Not in this house yet! Fine with me - for now, S2 really needs to stay focused on this school year.
With all this talk of open applications (Dâs first school app opens July 1st (less than 2 months from now!), my question is⊠Is your final list done?
My D has 12 schools on her list (hubby added 1 she doesnât want to apply to, weâll see how that goes.)
â 3 financial safeties (still need to visit 2 to make sure sheâll be happy there, but all factors including âvirtual tourâ make it look promising)
â 3 that look like academic matches, but we really need some merit money to make it realistic
â 6 that are either academic reaches or financial reaches or both, that she just refuses to take off the list on the off chance that she gets in and they decide sheâs awesome and offer her enough money to make it affordable.
We have only visited 6 schools and most of them came off the list following our visit. We have 3 visits set for the next month, and then nothing until September. My fingers are crossed that she likes the next 4-6 schools (2 visits set for September). I just want her to have options and not feel trapped when results come in. Hubby says that as long as sheâs happy with the safetyâs we donât need to visit the financial reaches until we know what kind of money they offer. I really canât argue that point since they arenât local.
D has literally every day M-F except July 4 and 5 booked with work between the last day of school and moving my big kids to school in August. Unfortunately a lot of schools donât offer weekend tours over the summer. I know that its better to visit schools during session when students are there, but Iâd rather her see them during the summer than not see them at all until acceptances come out. We can always revisit to get a decent school vibe.
Whatâs your plan? Please share. Help me feel like Iâm not the only one planning the next year out.
I met a mom last weekend who said 'Oh, my Daughter is a junior. Sheâll take the ACT in September or October and see how she does before we decide if sheâll take it again. We havenât visited any schools yet. Maybe in the fallâŠ" I honestly canât imagine being that parent.
On âresearchâ experience - I worked (for pay) as an undergrad starting my freshman year in a physics lab and stayed the summer between junior and senior years to work full time there. I got my name on one paper, not as lead author. Then as a grad student I worked in one lab for about a year, decided it wasnât my thing and switched to another for the rest of my (ahem) 8 years in grad school (so I was there pretty much full time for about 5 years). This was back before the âREUâ terminology so Iâm still unclear on how that is different from what I did as an undergrad⊠if thatâs just a central clearinghouse funding program or just what they call every research program for undergrads or a specific one or what. Also, I havenât worked in my field in 18 years.
But anyway, I just wanted to agree that the term âresearchâ is very broad but in general it means working with a professor usually on a project directed by them. Every research group is different depending on the size⊠from one professor individually overseeing a small number of students each working on their own project to something more like a large lab where the professor is the general manager who is fairly hands-off of the day-to-day operations and things are run more by post-docs, who manage the more senior grad students who manage the junior grad students and the undergrads are just there to do the grunt work.
On my research project on any given day I could be doing anything from sending emails to vendors to rewiring a power supply to trying to find a missing semicolon in some stupid code to learning LaTex to make my thesis look nice.