<p>I'm just curious ... how many of you as freshmen were able to get significant research experience during the summer? It seems like so many research programs want college juniors.</p>
<p>I got a research job during the fall of my freshman year. It wasn’t too bad, though I liked the stuff I did in later years a lot better.</p>
<p>Your best bet for the summer of freshman year is to ask professors in your department if they’re looking for any students over the summer. You just need to find someone with a few extra bucks, and you’ll have yourself a job.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was thinking of that route. Money isn’t much of an obstacle so I guess I can ask cheap.</p>
<p>I think as a freshman its kinda tough to research!</p>
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<p>If you work during the school year you can often try to do it for credit, as well.</p>
<p>(As a note, I think my first summer I did research for a professor I got paid $7 an hour. It was a fairly considerably paycut from the IT work I did the previous summer, but the experience was well worth having to live in a small bedroom with no working windows and broken AC for the summer.</p>
<p>best way to go about getting research as a freshman is just to ask profs at your school. Summer programs are usually competitive and you’ll be up against older students who already have experience.</p>
<p>I started out working in a lab using work-study money… I just did ***** work for a few months, but they taught me all the basics and the PI gave me a great rec for a lab I moved into my junior year that I’ll have a publication with. For me it paid off to just start small, working with someone willing to teach me the basics, even though I wasn’t going to get really substantial research out of that particular lab.</p>