<p>^You might not be paid, but I think undergrads at BU could do research if they so desired.</p>
<p>According to the BU physics department annual report about half of physics majors get involved in some type of research, mostly unpaid and not for credit, at one point or another during their studies. The school has a plan to try to increase that number eventaully to two/thirds. That means half of physics have NO research experience whatsoever. As far UROP experience for credit or pay, it is less than 5%. That would contrast to 100% research participation at MIT for physics majors where it is part of the graduation requirment. In the end what matters for grad school applicants is the significance of the research, not just any type of research.</p>
<p>I agree with you that it is much easier to find a paid research position as an undergrad at MIT (or for credit/grades.) This is something which actually may be relevant to the OP, since money is an issue.</p>
<p>The key question with the 50% participation rate in research at BU is whether this is because half the undergrads didn’t want to do research or whether they couldn’t find a position. I’d imagine there are more people at BU than MIT who don’t have an interest in grad school.</p>
<p>MIT all the way. In addition to the reasons discussed about, think about the alumni network you will get at MIT. BU simply can’t match that.
The friends you meet at MIT will someday become the most prominent figures in their fields. You will not have this kind of relations at BU.</p>
<p>Collegealum:</p>
<p>According to BU’s physics department annual report the demand for undegraduate research position signficantly outstrips the supply at the current time. In addition, most positions are “volunteers” which is code for doing the grunt work for the grad students. There is a plan to remedy the situation in the future. That is actually very typical. MIT is fairly unique in that undegrads are essentially guaranteed the opportunity to participate in high level research and it is imbedded in the program. As far as getting the opportunity to be a first named author on a research paper, it is pretty much unheard of. For the three years my D was doing research in a big lab in the neuroscience department at MIT she was essentially treated on par with the grad students.</p>
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<p>I don’t agree that that is code for grunt work. It just means it is unpaid.</p>
<p>I looked up the CVs of some of Ds’ professors – interesting that many of them did not attend ultra-selective colleges as undergraduates. UNC and Skidmore, for example. Their graduate work, on the other hand, was universally done at top-tier universities.</p>
<p>the quality of your undergraduate institution means a lot for graduate admissions. it’s not like you can just get a 4.0 at a lesser institution and expect to easily get into top grad schools; this is a common misconception on this forum. If you’re going to grad school in the sciences, you will probably get a fellowship+stipend, so you won’t really have to take on further debt past undergraduate</p>
<p>and like someone else mentioned, the 100 or 200k you might be saving in these four years by not going to MIT is not significant when you take into account the better salary and job opportunities you would most likely have in the future</p>
<p>Someone who could get into MIT will probably end up with a very high physics GRE score, so they are likely to do well in graduate admissions. And they are likely to be the ones getting the research positions during undergrad even if not everyone gets one automatically.</p>
<p>If there was an in between choice like Cornell or even UCLA or something like that, I might favor that choice. However, MIT might be the best choice here.</p>
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<p>If it is unpaid and you can’t even get credit then it typically is gruntwork. If the research work is of any value you should always be able to get credit for it.</p>
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<p>What are you basing this on?</p>
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<p>Not really. Maybe they don’t consider research a class. It’s pretty useless to accumulate pass/fail credits anyway. </p>
<p>I strongly disagree with your characterization of unpaid research.</p>
<p>My point was not about paid/unpaid research, but whether the work qualifies as original research part of a program of study. If you don’t study the prior art, define the hypotheses to be tested, participate in the project definition and have to analyze the results, it is not real research but just lab lab work. </p>
<p>Who says unpaid research is pass/fail? At MIT UROP research, when for credit is fully graded and counts towards both departmental and institute requirements. Results are frequently published.</p>
<p>This is a family decision as to how the family money is going to be spent. If your parents can comfortably support MIT, I would advise going there. As a mom, I would, in our financial situation, rustle up the funds for MIT. If we were in dire straits or had some immediate issues like we did a few years, ago, I would recommend going with the grant money as it would have been foolish for us to try to pay for a full freight top price college.</p>
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<p>Again, there is no indication that it is not original research. At MIT and elsewhere, a UROP is what you make it. Most people who start out are given a part of a grad student’s project and you learn under them. You read the literature to understand the project, but the most important thing is to gain confidence in your techniques and be able to troubleshoot. I know you are/were in a technical area but I forget if you were involved in a “wet” lab. The so-called grunt work of doing lab techniques and being able to troubleshoot experiments is the hard part of being a grad student. If you are motivated and capable of doing more than that, I think any group or professor would welcome someone taking on more responsibility. I don’t think the prof cares about your official status as “for credit” or whatever.</p>
<p>Even at MIT, it would be unusual to actually propose a project as an undergrad; maybe some of the upperclassmen and a few underclassmen can do that, but a lot of people start out doing research way before then, sometimes before they have taken a class in that area. For instance, I interviewed for a P. chem UROP as a freshmen and the prof told me they would just teach me the quantum mechanics necessary on the fly. So obviously the expectation was not that I was going to propose a project off the bat.</p>
<p>Again, what really distingues research by undergrads at MIT is:</p>
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<li> Research is part of the culture and imbedded in the undergraduate curriculum.</li>
<li>Original research is conducted by undergrads. It is actually part of the definition of a UROP.</li>
<li>in order to get credit you have a to submit an original research plan to be approved by faculty and the department. General lab work does not qualify.</li>
<li> it is precisely that type of research experience that gives MIT grads an edge when applying to top grad school program. Any grad student can be expected to learn how to use lab equipment, but few grad students come already trained and able to conduct original research. </li>
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<p>If one compares apples to apples, BU undergrads conduct less than 100 UROPs per year in total as opposed to several thousand at MIT, despite a much smaller undergrad population at MIT.</p>
<p>^Look, I went to MIT and did UROPs there, so I speak from experience…</p>
<p>So did I but it seems that things have vastly changed since that time:
Original research by undergrads is now common.
UROPs done for credit in the department are graded not P/F
UROPs for credit require a research proposal submission.</p>
<p>My D just graduated last summer and every UROP she participated in was based on a specific research proposal to the department and faculty for approval, detailing the objectives of the study, test methodology and proposed analysis. She also did plenty of volunteering in the lab initially that did not qualify as a research project.</p>
<p>Chadbrochil if you could post your stats that would be helpful.
Secondly, I say MIT unless if you plan on going to grad school such as med school or law school for which you would have to shovel out another 65K/yr.</p>
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<p>1) UROPs could be taken for P/F or A-F grading when I was there. UROPs were one method people used to boost their GPA. Other than a few profs, most of the time it wasn’t that tough to get an “A” if you put in a good-faith effort.
I suggested that other colleges may not want to do P/F because the credit was inconsequential; they might not also want to do grades for research because it might get abused. </p>
<p>2) It is typical to join a group and to be put on an existing subproject; that’s true at MIT, or anywhere. I remember having to write up a “research proposal” (1-2 pgs.) which was reviewed by the prof., not the department. As I said, I was a freshman and working in a group whose area I had not taken classes in yet, so the expectations were that great for the proposal.</p>
<p>With regards to points (1) and (2), I don’t see why the for-credit status or the formal requirement for a write-up is particularly meaningful. It’s not like if you haven’t identified an original direction of research when you joined, that means you will be doing grunt work the whole time. Most of the time it’s a process. You interview with a lab, get the job, they give you some papers to review to know your subfield, and you start aquiring techniques, ability to troubleshoot these techniques, presentation skills, and gradually expand your knowledge of the literature (as well as recognize the gaps in the literature from which directions can be pursued.) Whether research is “original” is not black-or-white.</p>
<p>If you are a more advanced student, then you may have more input in the beginning. But again, there is nothing stopping you from having more input in the beginning. Further, there is nothing stopping you from being more involved in your research direction at Boston University either. </p>
<p>You are suggesting that more students do research at MIT, and that the research was more student-driven. OK, well, MIT does get better students to begin with. So even if you accept those premises, it doesn’t mean that an interested and talented Boston University student couldn’t do the same thing. Association != Causation</p>
<p>The only thing I would say is that BU doesn’t have the breadth of different research areas and their recs wouldn’t hold the same weight. As to the availability of research positions, if it is true that there is more demand than available positions, wouldn’t you think that a guy who got into MIT probably would be able to be one of the ones who got the positions? That is, if only 50% of the students could get research positions, wouldn’t you think that an MIT admit would be able to be in the upper half of students at BU?</p>
<p>I saw a blog about an NYU student in chemistry who had been on the U.S. chemistry olympics team. He said that while NYU doesn’t have a great chem department and that it is smaller, he got a lot more attention there. He went on to study synthetic organic chem at Harvard for graduate school.</p>
<p>One chem prof at UCLA told me that they are a big school, but that their top students are the same as the top students anywhere even though their student quality has a wide range. One student who worked for him did a lit review, identified a project, completed it over the summer, and wrote up a paper in which he was the 1st author. I doubt that is the expectation there, but I doubt it matters whether there was a formal program or not.</p>
<p>BTW, an MIT undergrad physics graduate from '94 just won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He said his research experience was not very valuable though he may have just picked the wrong professor. He did say, however, that Junior Lab really helped him in grad school.</p>