<p>If you are going to be doing research at your college over the summer for a prof how does this usually work? The prof has one student that has seniority so his project has to come first. The prof told my son he will be happy to let him do some research for him but he would have to keep the costs pretty low. He will be a junior next year at a R1 uni.</p>
<p>The prof told him to let him know what the housing costs would be, etc. I am assuming that my son will be paid room & board but no actual salary. I haven't talked to him yet this is just a snippet of a conversation he had with my husband. My son does want to go to grad school (physics & math major now so one of those fields) & we know that research is pretty important on your grad school applications.</p>
<p>Does this seem in line with how you get research other than internships with businesses over the summer? He did save quite a bit of money last summer so that he can pay for his books, etc. next year so not getting paid is not such an issue. I know that unpaid internships this year seem to be huge since companies do not have as much money to go around.</p>
<p>This is one way to get research experience. I researched at my home institution during the school year and was involved in several research experiences for undergrads (REUs) in the summer. The benefit of an REU is that they are paid usually through some sort of grant such as NSF and therefore pay a little more 4500 for the summer with housing provided or 3000-3500ish with food and housing provided. There are many of these available. Most have application deadlines in february :(. Listings of available math/physics ones can be found at US</a> NSF - REU - List Result for physics and at US</a> NSF - REU - List Result for math. I also found several just by google searching undergraduate research + school and field I would like to work at.</p>
<p>Physics REUs pay more than math REUs... Math REUs typically pay like $4,000 with no housing or food allowance, or $2,4000 with room and board. Still better than no stipend though :)</p>
<p>My college also has some money to support undergraduate research during the summer. Last summer I got a grant of $3,600 to work with the computer science department. That might be something else to look into.</p>
<p>Thanks so much. The links above will come in very handy next year! </p>
<p>My son will be working with math this summer & I am assuming that the r&b will head under a grant situation (and maybe the prof also told my son to add in a stipend?). The physics prof won't be in town this summer so no physics research this summer.</p>
<p>I've found undergrad research can turn into one of three basic types of projects.</p>
<p>1) You're a lab rat for a senior grad student or post-doc. You don't get to do a whole lot of input into experiment and design; you just perform experiments for them.
2) You're given a limited amount of freedom where you work cooperatively with a grad student. Generally they're in charge, but they're more willing to work with you and let you understand what you're doing what you are, and will listen to your input.
3) You're treated like a new grad student and are either assigned a project to take care of yourself, or are allowed to design your own. You still might have some light supervision from another student, or you might be part of a little summer research team comprised of another undergrad or two.</p>
<p>I've had both 2 and 3, though I've seen a number of undergrads get stuck with people in my current group that puts them more into 1. If your son can, he should definitely find out which category it'll be and decide if that's the kind of project he wants to work in. It's probably still not too late to try and ask a few other professors if they could support him for the summer (unless he's been working for this guy for a while, in which case it might be better to stick with the current one).</p>
<p>As for money, he should look into seeing if his school offers summer research grants (or just normal undergraduate research grants) to help support himself. If it's a smaller school, they're usually pretty generous with giving them out, so that could help alleviate some of the burden from his professor, perhaps letting him get paid a bit more.</p>
<p>And, as a baseline, I got paid $9/hr the summer after my sophomore year (no housing), $8/hr (housing provided) after my junior year, and $12/hr (no housing) after graduating a semester early and staying at my school to work for nine months before starting grad school (I was paid at the grad student rate.).</p>
<p>What is R1 university? Rank 1? If so, then there should be university funding available. My daughter applied for and recieved summer research grants at her school for summor after sophmore year and summer after junior year. First year she approached the prof and asked to work with him. She worked one-on-one on a project he was already involved with. Second year she worked on a group project with prof, grad student and undergrads in 2 areas of computer science. </p>
<p>In each case she rec'd the standard at her school which is $3,000. Getting it entailed writing a proposal and having the prof sign off. Since it is so cheap to sublet in summer, this funding worked orked out fine. I think she did a little side work for the school development office calling alumni for donations for a couple of weeks too.</p>
<p>Summer after freshman year, she looked for summer jobs with faculty and found a Physics prof who needed someone to crunch data for him and his 2 grad students. She was paid $10 per hour. She got some experience and a trip to the Fermi lab at the end of the summer.</p>
<p>In no case was housing paid, just salary or grant. I think it is a little rough that the prof isn't giving a budget to him, but by now he should know if he is in an area with cheap or expensive summer sublets.</p>
<p>Yes, this is how lots of research occurs, just approaching a prof and agreeing to a project. OR REU. And yes it is extremely important for grad school in his areas of interest. I should think it much more difficult to get real research from internships with companies in these particular areas, and think that working at a university would be more valuable.</p>
<p>I think that Mom2OH meant "research one". This refers to large, research universities that do indeed have robust research programs. I would never take on an internship without salary, but I certainly wouldn't expect some sort of room or board allowance. There are formal programs to seek summer research opportunities and i think newname provided the links. The other option is to stay with your current lab over the summer. If your child runs low on motivation than the latter option might cause their work to stagnate and a shorter, more directed experience may provide a lot more benefit. If your child can establish goals and work faithfully towards them, staying with their current lab might be great.</p>
<p>Meant to tell Mom2of OH that my daughter was Math/Physics at first, which turned into Math/CS. When people here talk about working in labs, that is something I have not heard mentioned in research in your son's topics. Except a lab portion of a science or CS class coursework, and I still find it puzzling that people talk this way when talking in general about PhD programs. Mine has never worked in a lab, but has done physics, math or cs research every summer and often during school year too.</p>
<p>That reminds me of another route she has taken to research, which is to do an independent study under a professor during the school year as a semester class credit. He should look into that as well. She was able to do 2 so far, and seems to be doing additional 2 this last semester of school.</p>
<p>Thank you for all your help. I guess I should say that he is at a tier 1 (research) private university; however, it is not a large school. I guess it best known for engineering, pre-med, nursing, & business (of all things). The math department is very small & as it turns out the physics department is pretty small too. The two biggest problems he has is that most of the research is reserved for the grad students & many of the profs are gone this summer so it eliminates a lot of opportunities that we thought he would get when he checked out this school.</p>
<p>It might be a little hard to do research during the school year because he always has at least 2 physics classes, 2 math classes + 1 other class each semester. Fortunately/Unfortunately he tested out of a lot of the lower level classes so he is taking the upperlevel courses since he started. This school is extremely hard (everyone complains that it is as hard as MIT w/o the recognition) & you are spending at least 10+ hours per physics class (a week) and the math isn't much better. He never complains about it because he loves the subjects but I am not sure how you could get good grades & work/volunteer too.</p>
<p>He will be talking to the prof today so we will see what happens. Thankfully, he is NOT a spender at all & had a ton of money left from last summer saved up so using the money to pay for R&B won't be so bad. I am kind of relieved that he is getting this opportunity based on fact that there are not many opportunities in undergrad. At least he has his foot in the door & can possibly work a little during the year.</p>
<p>I think he is on the right track to get this experience, then, if undergrad research is harder to get at his school. It is vital for grad school, imho, and will trump gpa.</p>
<p>It seems clear that the professor just needs a slim budget, not no budget, so have him not try to self fund everything.</p>
<p>My daughter also started in physics, so the course load had been pretty heavy from first year. And if she has an hour free in a day, she will book something, TA something, get a job, volunteer. But her school has outlets for overschedulers. Some safety valves, like pass/fail, late withdraw, etc.</p>
<p>This is an opportunity to tell people about undergrad focused schools that are dedicated to undergrad research, such as Brown University. The grad school is small, so the professors do really need undergrads for research, and they do also teach classes in person. Only TA's run the smaller lab sessions. Yea Brown!</p>
<p>Wish I hadn't put her school in my handle, so I could comment more freely on her grad school progress without identifying her.</p>
<p>Thanks Brown, Yeah, we really didn't pay attention to the ratio of grad to undergrad but it is almost equal (& I think there are actually more grad students). I am sure this is why there are so few opportunities. We just assumed because the school was so well known for research that it included undergrad. I could write a book about what we did right & what we did wrong with both sons, but you never really know how any other schools would have been different depending on so many factors (changing majors, personalities, etc).</p>
<p>We just try to look at all the positives & move on;] Glad that your daughter is doing so well at Brown.</p>