<p>Is it too late to land anything for the summer? How accesible is research for ugrads to find research that relates to medicine?</p>
<p><a href="http://college.ucla.edu/urc-care/prog.htm%5B/url%5D">http://college.ucla.edu/urc-care/prog.htm</a></p>
<p>i know i sent out 5 e-mails only 1 response and it was a we have too many volunteers, etc, its making me weary of the opportunities offered at ucla for research</p>
<p>Well you're lucky to have gotten 1 email response. If you're serious about research, you meet face to face, not behind your computer.</p>
<p>so you think i should go visit these profs. during their office hours,? keep in mind i dont go to ucla yet so it may be somewhat difficult for me to get to campus at the time.</p>
<p>confused,</p>
<p>You're a freshman and you're already emailing profs? Slow down a bit, buddy. You've got plenty of time to worry about that. </p>
<p>Get to school, enjoy your first quarter, and start looking for resources while on-campus. Right now, it's far too early to even consider what kind of lab you want to work in. Don't worry, you're not going to flunk out of college if you just use your first quarter to adjust.</p>
<p>The fact that you're still in high school is just a tad minor detail to have left out in your original post :rolleyes:. Ditto what UCLAri said.</p>
<p>i'll be atteding ucla in the fall, well maybe, but i just wanted something over the summer.</p>
<p>you live in LA? the best high school students can do is volunteer doing menial labor at ucla hospital</p>
<p>confused23 and namaste, not true, I e-mailed 5 professors and doctors this year as a senior in high school, and I was offered 3 spots in a reserach lab. I went to one for a while, but after I got accepted by UCLA i stopped. I'll start again later.</p>
<p>It's really not hard to get research at UCLA, the opportunities are limitless.</p>
<p>namaste - "you live in LA? the best high school students can do is volunteer doing menial labor at ucla hospital"</p>
<p>That's also not true, I was able to get volunteer hours in the ER too!(although I had a few hundred hours as a patient escort first) Again, I stopped because I got into UCLA.</p>
<p>what campus did u get those positions at? if ucla why did you stop</p>
<p>I got it at UCLA. It's not hard, just ask. I stopped because it was mainly an interest for a while. I will continue it later.</p>
<p>are you pre-med. if you are can you pm with me some good profs. that may have positions or how you would suggest me to go and find profs.</p>
<p>I will be premed in the fall, I don't really know any professors, just search for them online, and ask.</p>
<p>Confused, what's your major?</p>
<p>probably poli sci with neuroscience minor</p>
<p>confused,</p>
<p>Don't worry, you'll be just fine. That's an interesting "gap" between major and minor, though. I forsee a lot of walking in your future! :D</p>
<p>Anyway, as far as poli stuff goes, there's not a whole lot a first quarter frosh can do. Give yourself a few quarters, and you might be able to convince a prof or two to let you be a reader. After that, if you enjoy the major, I highly recommend you do at least an original paper or two. It's a great experience, and will develop your writing skills a great deal.</p>
<p>I thought you were still heading for high school next year and wanted a years head start for some reason.</p>
<p>Well, your selling point for the research position (since you don't have any experience at this point yet) will be the fact that you can commit so much time to the position (as in at least 2 years), since these researchers want something in return for the time they invest in training you. To be honest, you don't have to know anything at all about the research topic to be able to do any research- the research methods like Western blotting, ELISA assays, etc can easily be taught to anyone who can follow simple instructions. It's nice to know what exactly you're doing though and why, since this is part of the reason why you're going into that subject in research. So depending on the group of people you're working with (most of the time you'll be working with the graduate students in the lab and not the PI in charge), you may have to read this on your own to understand what you're doing, or they may teach it to you in time (or you'll learn it in class once you take it, namely LS3). </p>
<p>You can look up researchers at:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.research.ucla.edu/faculty/%5B/url%5D">http://www.research.ucla.edu/faculty/</a></p>
<p>Make sure you know what exactly you're going into and what you'll be doing. They'll usually start you off slow and then progressively add more tasks along the way. If all you're doing is looking at pictures on computers, or counting something, or just having computer reserach tasks, leave the lab immediately and don't look back. Don't forget to emphasize during your interview if they keep pressing you for what background information you know that you'll be willing to learn and able to commit to the lab for a long time. </p>
<p>Email does work, like it did for namaste, but going in person will be much more effective (with email, they can just easily delete your message, while in person they know that you're serious about a position). </p>
<p>Be persistant, and keep your options open. There are plenty of places and labs that would love to have people who can commit for a while. There are positions also available at the Jules Stein Eye institute, which is right next to the Mattel Children's hospital (connected to the campus). You can also find research positions at nearby hospitals like Cedars-Sanai, but that would require you to take the bus to transport to and may become a hassle- it would be much easier to just find one of the many reasearch positions on campus. </p>
<p>You can also try looking at the SRP (student research position) listing, but all the spots for the quarter should already be filled. The link is:</p>
<p>You should look through the previous descriptions and see what exactly are real research positions, and which ones are simply menial tasks (avoid at all cost). You get pass/not pass credit for taking SRP's at UCLA, and you have a notification on your transcript of the research you did. But you can just as easily get any lab you work in to sign you up to get SRP credit (if you just ask they'll usually agree, and will sometimes require you to do that to make sure that you'll be committed to showing up at a set time every week since you risk a "not pass"). I don't really like the SRP site, since you have to respond almost instantaneously to the time when the position is posted to get it. It is much better to go to the first link I posted and find a position that interests you (and the lab will usually be more receptive and open to what kinds of tasks they'll teach you).</p>
<p>With that said, good luck in your search.</p>
<p>Well, I guess this is one instance where having the hospital and medical school attached to the university is helpful, since it offers so many more research positions (just look at all the contacts where the emails will say @mednet.ucla.edu) while having the luxury of never having to leave campus It's literally just a hallway away from the life science building- the CHS (center for health sciences), where the public health, school of medicine, and school of dentistry all meet and branch out from (as well as the hospital). The new building for nanotechnology that is in progress will also open a lot of new positions available, since nanotechnology is changing the face of science and opening up new possibilities in how medicine can be conducted.</p>
<p>hey jyancy thanks for the advice</p>
<p>i was using the srp website and that explains why i was having trouble finding things there, but i had a question about the other site, none of the faculty who have research going on say we need volunteers so how do you have to approach that</p>