I really wish I had known about RRSP earlier - I applied to Bama as a fallback for the national merit money, but even after I was accepted to some of my reach schools, I committed to UA because it’s an awesome engineering program and awesome campus and honestly I love everything about it. But I didn’t know about RRSP and now it’s too late (I did ask admissions, and they confirmed that). Does anyone know a good way to get involved in research as a freshman? I’ve worked with robotics a lot in HS, and dabbled with electronics. I’m majoring in mechanical engineering. Thank you for any suggestions!
@Henloo I have been looking at the Emerging Scholars program and will be encouraging my daughter to apply. https://undergraduateresearch.ua.edu/emerging-scholars-program/ I was actually about to post something today to ask if anyone has had any recent experience with it. It seems like a good way to get involved in research, and I would think that there would be opportunity to continue the research after you complete the program.
Congrats on choosing Alabama! You will absolutely be able to find research opportunities outside of RRSP.
Start with the information on the Office of Undergraduate Research webpage:
https://undergraduateresearch.ua.edu
They have information about how to find research opportunities in general, but you might also like the Emerging Scholars Program (also on that page). I think you would still be able to apply for this fall.
When we visited campus last October, access to research was the highest thing on my son’s list, so he talked to the students we met about it. The majority we talked to seemed to be involved with research, and when we asked how they found it, a couple said RRSP or Emerging Scholars, but more said things like “at the beginning of the semester the professors told the class about their research and asked us to let them know if we were interested.”
I know you are asking about research, but given your robotics/mechanical/electrical background you might also be interested in participating in the extracurricular group that designs a Mars-mining robot each year for some sort of competition. I don’t know the details, but we saw it in October and it was impressive. There was also another group designing a Baja car.
Yeah, regarding that robotics team:
http://www.alabamaastrobotics.com/
They are supposed to be pretty good!