Hi all!
I am currently a senior in high school and I am considering The University of Alabama due to its generous National Merit Scholarship package. The Randall Research Scholars Program intrigued me, and I submitted my application for its priority deadline. I am majoring in Computer Engineering, so the program sounds like a great fit.
With that being said, I have a few questions for anyone currently in the program or anyone who has been in it.
Do students involved in the program still have plenty of time to have a social life and participate in extracurricular activities? I know it is a time commitment, but I just do not know how much.
How involved are the students in the program with each other and the professors?
In general do students enjoy the experience?
Would being in this program take away from other opportunities in the classroom?
Is all research done during the fall and spring semesters?
How involved are the students in creating their own research?
Or if anyone wants to share general information on the program that would be greatly appreciated!
Sorry for asking so many questions at once, but I am extremely interested in this program, and I am hoping to get accepted into it.
My daughter is a junior at Alabama majoring in Computer Engineering and is also in RRS. If you’d like, I can send you her email & you can contact her directly. I’ll try to answer a few of your questions based on what she’s told me over the past few years.
-She’s definitely very busy (she’s also one of the lab managers), but having a social life is definitely possible. RRS actually has a group that plans social events/get togethers (obviously hard this year, but I believe they’ve been able to do a few outdoor, socially distanced things).
-Level of involvement is up to the student. Some are heavily involved - they do some of the social events, hang out in the lab, meet up to grab dinner (especially during her freshman year, my daughter loved this – they had class on Monday nights & a bunch of them would go to the dining hall afterwards). Some just go to the class & do their research & not much else with the group. And I’d bet it varies a bit for some depending on how heavy their course work is any particular semester. My understanding is that apart from the class, research & presentations, there really aren’t a lot of requirements to attend events. But I think that it’s like anything else - the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. So if you decide to do RRS, I’d encourage you to go to some of the social meet-ups. Dr. Sharpe & Ms. Batson are very accessible and very helpful. And the students all love Darren who teaches the first year class ( I apologize - I don’t remember his last name, the students all call him Darren). They had so much fun with him in the class & my daughter just raves about him.
-I would say that yes, the students in general enjoy the experience. It’s so much more than just research. They also do a lot of professional development & there’s a lot of support for students.
-I suppose it would take away from other opportunities in the classroom to the extent that your time is limited. The extent of which would probably be based upon how effective your time management skills are.
-Research is during fall & spring semester. According to my daughter, the expectation is that it’ll be roughly 9-12 hours a week (based on the credit hours assigned to it), although there’s some flexibility with most projects - I know that sometimes on the weeks my daughter has more exams she might spend less time on research, and then spend more the next week.
-Students have a great deal of input as to what research they do. I know my daughter met with several professors to discuss potential projects before settling on one. It is also possible to change projects/professors after the semester/year end if the student wants. I’m not sure how frequently the students creates their own research project (usually they’ll work with professors on one of their projects), however I’m guessing you’d be able to as long as you found a professor who was willing to support you.