Hey guys, any of you land any undergrad research that lead to authorship? How'd you do it?
I ask as a community college kiddo with a subpar GPA who wants to transfer into uni as a junior, and to make up for my shitty earlier years with some a solid portfolio so grad school at a decent place isn't impossible.
Just ask around with the professors. I'm coming from a small private uni so the chance to do research is a much greater privilege (profs usually do an informal application process) but if you are at a larger uni there should be someone who will take you.
Tip: ask everyone if your first few choices aren't responding. You want to tell grad schools you did research for X number of years. What it's in doesn't matter that much unless
You are looking at top ten schools.
t. A 3.4 gpa biochem major who did computational research for 2 years and is now going to a pretty good UC for inorganic materials research.
It's very doable.
Damn, biochem and computation is exactly what I want to get into. Kind of eerie, lol.
Thanks for the response. I'll be going to a state uni, so pretty big, hopefully someone will take me. My only concern is not having enough time to establish contacts and just having to immediately pester staff for a spot - is that acceptable? I was considering sending out applications for research before I even transfer, so that when I arrive I'd, ideally, be researching from day one to make up for two years at a junior college with nothing special.
I proved that the use of nCr always results in a prime if you factor out the denominator from the numerator. But there are rules and its basically counting so it never got published.
Gonna ask here too, what are my chances of getting into a decent grad school if:
-I have 1 year doing undegrad research
-Mmmmmaaay have a publication, AFTER i apply to,grad schools?
Im applying this fall for next fall. Also, i have a shit GPA ~3.4
How much does research, statement of purpose and letter of rec weight in relative terms?
I wanna apply to,some pretty good,school and i feel i might be too ambitious, granted my major is,not really competitive or well-known.
My choices are:
UC Davis
Cornell
UW Madison
Purdue
Michigan State
Im scared Veeky Forums
Funnily enough, I just finished a research project in electroanalytical chemistry as a 3rd year chem major. Waiting to hear if it will get published, if it does get published I am the first name author...
Basically just asked a prof who had taught me analytical chemistry 2 and 3 the previous 2 semesters and he was pretty keen for me to do some lab work (for them, we're basically slave labour, I'm an Ausfag and I was making minimum wage) but in the end I found a novel result so hopefully it'll all work out for the best
I'm a MechE. student with a terrible GPA because I'm more interested in personal projects outside of class than I am in the less advanced material we go over in lecture, and I have multiple professors literally begging me to do research with them after they saw some of the stuff I'm working on by myself. This all happened suddenly over the last month or so. Honestly this whole situation is surreal and I'm expecting to wake up any moment now and be disappointed that none of it actually happened. Assuming that this all isn't a dream, though, don't be like me. I'm expecting my GPA to drop to a 2.5 after this semester.
>2.5 GPA
Holy shit user, wtf happened
Horrible untreated ADHD that I don't want to get rid of because it also makes me do the really awesome shit that my professors are now fighting over me for.
I have a 2.67 right now.
>I do really awesome shit
>like SUPER awesome shit
>not good at school tho lol its too beneath me
you sound autistic, you wont get into a good grad school or any grad school at all
keep doing the super awesome shit you do ok
You can be sour grapes all you want, but they're each trying to line me up with all these grad schools and conferences, something I had never intended to do in the first place. I'm a lot of things, but definitely not autistic. I just have a really, really hard time focusing on things that I don't find extremely interesting, so the only problems I end up working on are those that are really advanced and haven't been done before.
>they saw some of the stuff I'm working on by myself.
such as?
Maths here. My university offered 4-6 week research training programs to undergrads in the summer. My project lead to an authorship, but had to write the paper in my free time during masters which wasn't easy. My supervisors gave me a lot of help thankfully. Recently excepted for publications.
Wut? nCr as in "n choose r"?
4 choose 2=6 which is not prime...
Or by denominator do you mean nCr /R?
This gave me some motivation. I'm in the same boat as you.
If you are male and/or Asian/white yer likely fucked for reus.
See how this works? But C must be at least 6 greater than r to work consistently.
>walk into professor's office
>"hey, I'm interested in getting some experience with research. I looked at your webpage and think what you study is interesting -- do you have any projects I could work on with you?"
This is all it takes. It helps if it's somebody who knows you a little bit so they know going in you're not an idiot and so they can find an interesting problem at your level, but whatever.
They won't know me at all unless I volunteer time this summer. I'll be transferring from a community college out of town, and I don't think they do research at community colleges.
rad
>first author
props user, should open up some high tier grad school doors.
you probably can't do research in your first semester
first take some good classes with good professors (ask around). ask intelligent questions, see who seems to know what he's doing, ask him for research
... What. Are you surprised numbers have a prime factorization?
Are you dumb? Many numbers have prime factorization with multiplicity, that is the difference.
>probably
Even if I were to hang out with them the term prior to enrolling, as in maybe volunteer some hours on a regular basis? I really, really need as much research time as I can get
well then yes you could
but can you do meaningful research this early on? why are you in such a hurry?
anyway, you lose nothing by trying. if you're going to hang out, try to ask them about their work, read their shit, etc etc and show your interest and they'll take you in quickly
it wasn't published because even if it's true (which I really really doubt) it's inane and useless
OP you may have to fight for the opportunity.
I was in a similar situation, transferred from community college to large state school. I literally asked every professor in the department and nobody responded or was willing to work with me. They would not let me do research. Graduated now and have done research on my own, but it wasn't easy. Some schools believe in the ivory tower and will go to great lengths to see you fail unless you're a golden boy. Hopefully yours has some good professors.
At my university it's required that we take 2 semesters doing actual undergraduate research with a professor. My research was on literally building a fucking microscope heater stage because we needed one to study liquid crystals and it just kind of took off. The people at the APS March meeting liked it so we (my adviser and I) wrote a quick garbage paper to ensure no one stole the schematic.
what university did you go to? I didn't know of any schools that actually require research, how did that work, were you assigned a professor based on your major to do research with? Or was it your responsibility to seek out research just like at other unis, except it was required of all students?
My final year Undergrad research was worthy of publication but I was too young and naive to really push my professor for help and advice.
I feel like its their fault that the work was never published - should have communicated better
OP, as long as you have access to experimental research labs you will have a good chance of taing part in publishable research, even as an undergrad
Yes. I worked for three years in an experimental optics lab during undergrad. I got two first name papers, a couple conference presentations, and various other minor things.
Literally just walked up to one of my physics professors during finals week and said "Hey. I'm interested in doing research."
She was new at the time, first year at the college. She was desperately hard up for any students, so she took me on.
I went the community college route, too.
Thee publications from my undergrad reserach.
I went to the University of West Florida. It's a small ass university but they did a great job of preparing us for graduate school. I was a physics major so we just talked to the professor about their research and asked if they had any open spots. I didn't want to do computational physics or work with lasers so I got grouped with the experimental condensed matter guy.
>can you do meaningful research this early on?
I don't know, good question. I suppose I should be working on being able to do that. What does it take to do meaningful research?
Noted, ty. I had a feeling it'd be like this.
That sucks user, and ty
>First name papers
Props user! How'd this help with grad school options?
How'd you go about doing it? Pestering professor's right off the bat, getting to know them a term before, or just taking it ez and waiting until they know you?
>mfw just invented a cheap, implantable artificial kidney
My dad is also a nephrologist who makes a living off of hooking people up to dialysis machines. He left my family for some cougar when I was in the second grade, making my life unnessecarily hard, so this is a double burn.
I did. I just went around asking every professor if they wanted to do some summer research. All of them said yes. One of them in particular was VERY willing to take me on as a student. I went with her. Now, May 2 I'm starting.
I was in an accelerated introductory science program, where all 11 of us were published by sophomore year. It didn't do much because I decided to go Wall Street, kek.
>Noted, ty. I had a feeling it'd be like this.
It's not. He doesn't sound well honestly.
BUMP
Were you a community college transfer? Did you transfer to a big school?
>How'd this help with grad school options?
It didn't, really. My uni offered me a full scholarship if I agreed to stay in house. The letters I built up from working with them helped more than anything.
I'm working on my second master's degree now, and I'm going to start teaching high school in the fall.
How many publications do you need out of undergrad to get into a top grad school?
Do these publications have to be in a top journal or is it impressive enough to be published in even a mid tier journal for an undergrad?
Is Physical Review Letters (PRL) impressive for physics?
That's not how it works. There's no list of things you just need to check off.
Then how famalam?
any publications are impressive in undergrad. you arent expected or required to have publications.
The instant you start to drop in GPA you fucking quit. Regroup your shit and take the next semester. Trudging through with a shitty GPA just totally fucks you over.
If it were that clear cut, there would be a lot more people doing it.
What if I wanted to publish in a field not necessarily related to my degree?
Planning on publishing a mathematics paper (number theory) but I'm in biotech