<p>when did you all start doing research during your undergrad? And when did you start actually doing real projects? I'm a sophomore atm and I'm at a lab, but I'm mainly following grad students around and seeing what they're doing 10 hours a week. I'm a little worried because I want to get into a top 10 aerospace engineering school and I feel the research experience I'm getting right now is useless. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>You’re not going to be expected to “start actually doing real projects”. Even at top 10 programs, most admits at most did a thesis under fairly strict supervision by a professor and/or grad student.</p>
<p>Continue doing what you’re doing.</p>
<p>I disagree a little bit with Oyama. You’re not yet expected to work on any real projects, because you are just a sophomore and you don’t know anything yet. But eventually, you will work on some real projects.</p>
<p>I’m in psychology so it is a little different, but my first year in the lab was also as a sophomore. I began doing routine tasks - I digitized videotaped data which was mind-numbingly easy. I presented at a small school-based conference. The next year, I joined another lab (so two labs); for one I wrote a literature review, and for the old lab I helped plan a pilot study. My third year in the lab (as a senior) I helped run the pilot study, coded and analyzed qualitative data, and wrote my own independent honors thesis on an idea I planned and executed solo (with assistance from my mentor).</p>
<p>You will get progressively more experience as you learn more and your mentor comes to trust you more. So don’t worry; following graduate students is all you are supposed to be doing right now.</p>
<p>I wrote two honors theses (one for psych in gender differences in a behavioral game, and one for econ about an analytical model for donation behavior), had a number of poster presentations, conference proceedings, and a have a paper in R&R, and most of the schools that I applied to (a lot being ‘top’ programs) said that these credentials were exceptional relative to what interviewees had.</p>
<p>It’s always best to take the initiative and try to be as involved in research, but the expectations (at least for CMU’s SDS PhD program and the B-schools I applied and got admitted to) weren’t set so high that applicants had to have done significant work. For my two theses, I came up with the projects fairly independently (after taking a few doctoral seminars and reading large bodies of literature) and collected/analyzed data, and wrote up the manuscripts, but many of my friends doing their theses had their projects given to them by their advisors, with a lot less responsibilities; many of them seemed to do well, too, during PhD applications.</p>
<p>Essentially, the whole ‘getting more responsibilities’ is an organic process. If you’re involved in research, are interested in it, and are good at it, you’ll notice the workload/responsibilities pile up as professors begin to notice your ability. My undergrad research career started with me not even being interested in research at all (I just wanted a letter of rec for a job), and it eventually led me to where I’m at now.</p>
<p>A lot of times professors will want to “test” you with little programs and responsibilities to see whether you are worth spending a whole lot of time on. My prof started me out just researching a few articles related to some topic - I don’t think he even used the articles. Then we wrote and published a book review - not a huge task, other than reading the book. Then I did a summer assistantship, which led to a larger theoretical article, and he advised my honors thesis project. They don’t want to give you big responsibilities right away in case you flake out. You need to earn their respect and trust.</p>
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<p>This is very true. I mentor undergrads and high school students in my lab every year, and there’s no way we’ll let them use the fairly critical (expensive and frustrating to repair) machines right off the bat. We’ll give them pretty low-risk projects for the first few weeks to be sure they can do normal tasks without any major oversights or errors. If they can do them well, then we step them up to learning some other things in the lab. If they can’t, then they’ll spend most of the summer weighing out alloys.</p>
<p>The lab I’m at is mainly grad students. There are undergrad research assistants(i think that’s their title" but I don’t think they’re doing actual research. There is one right now and his research is “polishing fibers.” Is that really research? Seems more like a job to me. I highly doubt I will get a project there, not because I’m impatient but because I think the lab is primarily for grad students, but I like the professor there though. The professor and one of his phd students is organizing a robot challenge where we design a robot from scratch. Could that count as a research project and research experience? I think that would be fun, but my main goal is to spend time on areas where I can strengthen my chances of getting into a top grad school.</p>
<p>My school did not have many graduate programs (none that were research based anyway, just MBA, MEd, etc.). So I cannot speak for the “primarily grad students” issue, however, immersing yourself in the culture of the lab and seeing what is expected of the grad students should be valuable as well. </p>
<p>Are you able to do independent study courses, or an honors thesis your junior/senior year? That is when you will really get to pick a topic /you/ enjoy and pursue it from start to finish, conducting the research all on your own (with the guidance of your advisor, of course). Also, make your career/higher education goals clear to one or two of your profs and see what else they can offer you to get you there. Most students did not start having real research experience until their junior year at my school.</p>
<p>Many labs are “primarily grad students”. It doesn’t mean you won’t get to work on a project. Starting by following grad students is a whole lot better than starting by cleaning the lab/dishes/etc. Everyone who has suggested that there is a trial period is correct. There are plenty of people who a grad student really would not want to trust with their experiments. We have an undergraduate now who, unfortunately, is being given less and less responsibilities due to a long history of errors with no improvement…</p>
<p>Following a grad student can lead to working on their experiments (sometimes, depending on the field, lab, and student, this can mean doing most of the hands on work). This can lead to working semi-independently on certain aspects of the experiment. And eventually you may work on “your own” project. If not, it’s still experience.</p>
<p>I realize looking back on my first days in a lab that the complete newbie is an investment and possibly a liability. Try not to be offended or frustrated when people approach you with caution. </p>
<p>And finally, be glad you’re in a lab full of grad students and not a lab full of post-docs. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know what a thesis is for undergrad work, so I would assume we don’t have it. We have senior&junior design though, idk if we have to write a thesis in them.</p>
<p>My thesis program was to design and conduct my own experiment and to write a mini book (though single-paged, double-spaced) about it. It took a year, and took the place of a course in my spring and fall semesters. You should ask one of your professors about it.</p>
<p>I think you might not actually understand what research is, so it would be a bit odd to let you do research by yourself. What are you picturing exactly? So you are coming up with the idea, developing the hypotheses, knowing how to test them and use the equipment necessary for that and write up the journal article, by yourself? And you have this ability already? And you just want to borrow the lab to conduct it? Or the professor says “here Charlies, I need this study done, please do it for me, okay?” </p>
<p>Most research is interdependent by it’s nature and requires a lot of real time/hands on immersion to do it effectively. It usually requires a lot of different people doing different things. Even our PhD students are often funded as ‘research assistants’. You learn by being hands on, taking on tasks that need to be done for research to move ahead <em>that are at your level of ability</em>, and as you get trained, learn the lab, learn more about the necessarily knowledge base within your field (coming from years of course work), you may eventually take on a bigger role and be considered a coauthor (but not usually 'your own project, just say a third or fourth author because you did some parts of the study but the more senior people did most of it). </p>
<p>One place you may do what I think you are suggesting you want to do would usually happen in a directed studies/independent study/thesis in your final year of our degree. By that point you’d have a lot of the foundational knowledge and then with a lot of guidance, you develop your own research question and test it. That would something entirely that you call your own research project.</p>
<p>Of course having said all this, it varies by field and no doubt there are exceptions to what I’m saying above. It’s just from my perspective I feel like your expectations might be out of proportion with reality of many labs.</p>
<p>Can I ask why you want to go to grad school? That usually involves research. Given you have no experience with it and don’t really know what it is, and therefore whether you really like it or not, or have an aptitude for it, it seems like an odd goal right now (sort of the cart before the horse, so to speak).</p>
<p>Yeah but I’m only a sophomore and pretty naive and ignorant I have to admit, so you can’t really expect me to know too much about it. I have a lot of reasons why I want to go to grad school., I think I will be more interested in pursuing education instead of getting a job straight out of college, management positions, I like research even if I haven’t done any projects but watching is pretty interesting as well, and other personal reasons. One that most people and even myself think is a bad reason is that I want prestige(name of school.) The institution I’m at right now is a state school, even though I did get accepted a to a couple top 10 engineering schools for my undergrad, but I wasn’t offered any scholarships, so in a way the acceptance was worthless. This is not a major reason though, but definitely something of consideration.</p>
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<p>This.</p>
<p>I’m a master’s student funded as a research assistant. My job is to conduct telephone interviews as part of a qualitative research study, then analyze and code the resulting data for publication. Later, I’ll probably be participating in actually writing the journal article. The entire study is actually in a completely different field from the one I’m specializing in - but it was where the funding was available.</p>
<p>For the last five weeks, I’ve basically done nothing in my 20 hours a week but read journal articles, because my advisor wants me to find any previous studies that match our methodologies. I’ve been unable to do so, so it looks like we’re breaking new ground - which is both good and bad…</p>
<p>Ive been working in a lab since sophomore year of high school, where i was just doing manual tasks and i became really good at experiments but i didnt know much about the content. I started research i guess freshmen year in college when i actually understood the material and became more independent. So far i only have 2 publications tho and working on a 3rd.</p>
<p>I went to a small, undergraduate based university. And I got involved in research 3 years ago, and the moment I entered the lab I had my own project. I even had the chance to present my research at conferences and write small grants to fund my work. This research was off of a federally funded grant the PI got, but because there weren’t graduate students, the undergraduates did all the work.</p>
<p>I think at a bigger university with graduate students it’s harder to “get noticed” in a lab as an undergraduate. And if there are graduate students around, it’s even harder to get your own project. Stick with it and see what happens. If you’re really concerned, you can always talk to your PI.</p>
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<p>This is a terrible reason to pursue a particular program or even wanting to go to grad school. When you’re looking at grad programs to pursue, consider who is researching what, your own research interests, and your personality. When it comes to research who you are working matters so much more than the name of the school you are getting your PhD at. For example, I’m considering applying to a very low tier university, but the person I want to work with did her post-doc with a very reputable person in the field I’m interested in, and I’m genuinely interested in her research. So it’d be a great chance to network AND work in a lab where I enjoy doing my job.</p>
<p>You’re still young (assuming since you’re still a sophomore), and you do have many more years left. That you got into research early is a good thing; stick with it and hopefully in your last two years you’ll be doing more work.</p>