<p>Hi, I am currently attending a California Community College (was a very good student in high school though) and I have a friend that I met by doing sports that is currently a graduate students at UCLA. We've become pretty good friend and I think that he thinks highly of my academic abilities. He offered me to work with him at UCLA.</p>
<p>I am pretty interested since 1) it could be a great intellectual experience 2)looks good on CV before transferring but do undergraduate students at UCLA usually do research on a graduate student's project or for Professors?</p>
<p>The way he talked to me, I think he meant that I would help him and not some Professors in his department...</p>
<p>Sorry if this question seems dumb but since I go to a community college and I am from a different country where research is not considered prestigious, research is something completely foreign to me.</p>
Depends on the department, lab and advisor. Speaking of the engineering and maybe science labs: For advisors who don’t care about the undergraduate learning, you will be doing the dirty work for the graduate student’s research (washing things, taking data whenever the graduate student is not there, etc.) For advisors who care, you will receive an individual project to work on just like graduate students, except your project is much much easier to control. But this all varies from lab to lab. For some labs , you may be asked to just shadow the graduate student and I think that in those cases, you don’t learn as much.</p>
<p>In my opinion, I don’t think a graduate student can really offer you a position, you’d have to get approval from the advisor. The graduate student should be under a professor …</p>
<p>Ok, I thought that graduate student (since they also teach, are mature etc.) had more authority but it seems like they don’t.</p>
<p>Maybe he meant that he would go talk to a Professor to have me as a research assistant but since I attend a community college, I wouldn’t want him to look kind of stupid. He is a very laid back guy from a different country (we come from the same place) so he probably doesn’t think it is a big deal.</p>