<p>Hello.
I'm a Science freshman in Canada. I haven't decided my major yet. If you were to be accepted by top prestigious grad. schools like MIT and Harvard, when is the best time to start research?
How many researches are enough and make you competitive?
How can you get started?
Thanks.</p>
<p>It's good to get as much research experience as possible -- you can't really ever have too much. Ideally, you'd like to do research in one or two labs, as grad schools are looking for your ability to commit to a research project for the long term; people who hop from lab to lab sometimes get asked pointed questions during interviews about their ability to stick with one project.</p>
<p>Technically, it's possible to get into top grad schools in the sciences by just doing a single summer of research, but I wouldn't really recommend that route.</p>
<p>You could try to email several professors at your school who are doing research that interests you, and ask if they have room in their labs for an undergraduate. If nobody has space, you could start to check out summer research programs.</p>
<p>Thanks for your post.
How is it possible to get into top grad schools in the sciences by just doing a single summer of research? I thought research was the most important factor for grad. school admission decision and therefore you needed it as much as possible. For only a single summer of research to be enough, do other areas like GPA and standardized exam scores need to be significantly stronger than those who did a lot of researches?
Is it possible for me as a freshman to start research now, or should I wait until certain time to start on it?
Also, how can you search for summer research programs? Do our own universities offer them, or are they offered by individual organizations?</p>
<p>Most, if not all, of the top universities have summer research programs these days. Schools like Hopkins, WashU, and Harvard have programs for undergrad students looking to gain valuable research experience. Start by looking at the schools that interest you, then look into the requirements for each school as some do require some research experience, letters of rec, etc.
Grad. schools look at a combination of GPA, GRE, research experience and letters of recommendation, with much of the focus on experience and your letters. They are looking for students who are creative, independent researchers.
A few summer research programs you may wish to look at:
<a href="http://www.aamc.org/members/great/summerlinks.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.aamc.org/members/great/summerlinks.htm</a></p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>Of course, as Mollie says, the best sort of research often takes more than one quarter to complete. Summer programs can work out well (I know a lot of people who have done meaningful research at one of the NSF REUs) --- maybe they're an especially good idea if one is just getting started --- but I think that e-mailing professors at your school whose work seems especially interesting can be the best way to get involved in research that can be done year-round.</p>
<p>I only mentioned the "one summer" because UCSF's cell/mol bio program mentions "at least one summer of research" as a criterion for acceptance into their program. Personally, I wouldn't advise having only one summer of research -- I presume everything else about a student's application would have to be extraordinarily strong in order to get into a top program with only one summer of research.</p>
<p>I don't know anybody in my grad program who had only one summer of research experience; in fact, a large percentage of the class worked as research technicians for at least a year before applying to graduate school.</p>
<p>It's definitely a great thing to start on research as a freshman, but just make sure you can handle adding a research job on top of your classes.</p>
<p>It also varies greatly in which field of science you go into. In my field, I had very little research experience and am now in a top program in my field. There are also a number of other students in the department who didn't have significant research experience as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Does reputation of the university where I do research matter?
Also, I just checked some research programs in the link in BioMedSci's post, but they all required me to be a US citizen or permanent resident. Are undergraduate students in Canada disqualified for most or all of the research programs in the US?</p>
<p>Are you actually expected to publish something or is it sufficient that you're working with a professor/grad student/post-doc on research and you're contributing a lot to the research even if you're not really directing it yourself?</p>
<p>Those are two separate questions, but both very important ones: does your project have to be self-directed? And is it crucial to publish?</p>
<p>(For example, I was published on a project I was not directing, and lots of my friends have directed projects that never got published. I don't know anything about PhD admissions, so I can't answer them -- sorry -- but felt it was impt. to point out.)</p>
<p>You're definitely not expected to publish, but it can help quite a bit. I went to an "applying to grad school" workshop my junior year, and the professors estimated that only about 5% of applicants to their program had been published. To be honest, that number sounds a little low to me, but rest assured that publication isn't required for admission -- it's just great extra credit.</p>
<p>Your project doesn't have to be self-directed, but I think it's assumed that you'll get more control over your project(s) as you learn more techniques and theory and become more competent. Of course, you are also responsible for selling your projects in the application and interview, and it's up to you to decide how to best present your research experience.</p>
<p>For example, I participated in one non-self-directed project and one self-directed project as an undergrad. I spent time discussing both projects in my applications and interviews, but I spent more time on the self-directed project -- it was more interesting, and I was more comfortable discussing the reasoning behind various lines of experiments. But I don't think I ever came out and told anyone that I wasn't responsible for experimental design in the first project -- just that I was responsible in the second project.</p>
<p>And 1ksy, the reputation of the university probably doesn't matter too much (although doing a summer research program at a given school can help your chances of getting into that school's program, in some cases), but the reputation of the individual PI can be important.</p>
<p>Are undergraduate students in Canada disqualified for most or all of the research programs in the US? Are there any ways that Canadian undergrads can qualify for those labelled "only for the US citizens or permanent residents"?</p>
<p>I don't know about you, but "only for US citizens/permanent residents" seem like pretty specific guidelines to me.. if there were a way around it, why would they specify it</p>