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Hi all,
Just had a quick question about whether it is worth it to ask for a letter of commendation.
I decided (contrary to LizzyM's advice.. sorry Ms. M 😳) to intern at a biopharm company with a research position. I am given different projects to do. The company itself is in stage 3 so there is no wet lab. To give an example, my most recent project was/is to research other benefits the drug may give to patients that could add to the profitability. This involves me spending hours on end on sites like pubmed, google scholar, etc looking up research papers, digesting info, taking notes, and condensing it all into one relevant source of information.
Relevant part of post:
One past project I worked on was assigned to me by the VP of corporate development. I was told to look through a huge excel workbook that detailed all their financial data, assumptions made on profits, etc that they would take to partners while negotiating. My job was to learn what it was actually talking about and simplify excel equations (ex- turn 10 lines of code and logic into one line per cell). At the beginning of the project I had no experience with excel functions nor did I know any CS. At the end, I added a great deal of functionality to the workbook, simplified a few hundred rows of code on each spreadsheet (about 15 sheets), and found various mistakes. In total, I personally found and corrected mistakes which amounted to over $200M. These were all verified.
Is there any way my work on this project will benefit me in terms of resume building or med school applications? I'm not sure if it would be worth asking for a letter of recommendation or commendation from the guy I worked under in regards to this or not. Financial work in my mind doesn't have a direct correlation to clinical experience or volunteering (although I do not get paid for this job and I work 3 hours a week from 8-5). If I didn't catch the mistakes, they would have gotten caught by someone they paid to look the whole thing over... so it isn't like I was the last line of defense.
I am sure that I will receive a letter of recommendation from the guy I work directly under for the research I am doing, but I am unsure if I should ask the VP of corp development for one as well because I spent a great deal of time with him. Is this type of thing helpful or no? I will be a sophomore in the Fall.
Thanks and sorry for the long post.. I'll try to revise it after I submit this thread
Just had a quick question about whether it is worth it to ask for a letter of commendation.
I decided (contrary to LizzyM's advice.. sorry Ms. M 😳) to intern at a biopharm company with a research position. I am given different projects to do. The company itself is in stage 3 so there is no wet lab. To give an example, my most recent project was/is to research other benefits the drug may give to patients that could add to the profitability. This involves me spending hours on end on sites like pubmed, google scholar, etc looking up research papers, digesting info, taking notes, and condensing it all into one relevant source of information.
Relevant part of post:
One past project I worked on was assigned to me by the VP of corporate development. I was told to look through a huge excel workbook that detailed all their financial data, assumptions made on profits, etc that they would take to partners while negotiating. My job was to learn what it was actually talking about and simplify excel equations (ex- turn 10 lines of code and logic into one line per cell). At the beginning of the project I had no experience with excel functions nor did I know any CS. At the end, I added a great deal of functionality to the workbook, simplified a few hundred rows of code on each spreadsheet (about 15 sheets), and found various mistakes. In total, I personally found and corrected mistakes which amounted to over $200M. These were all verified.
Is there any way my work on this project will benefit me in terms of resume building or med school applications? I'm not sure if it would be worth asking for a letter of recommendation or commendation from the guy I worked under in regards to this or not. Financial work in my mind doesn't have a direct correlation to clinical experience or volunteering (although I do not get paid for this job and I work 3 hours a week from 8-5). If I didn't catch the mistakes, they would have gotten caught by someone they paid to look the whole thing over... so it isn't like I was the last line of defense.
I am sure that I will receive a letter of recommendation from the guy I work directly under for the research I am doing, but I am unsure if I should ask the VP of corp development for one as well because I spent a great deal of time with him. Is this type of thing helpful or no? I will be a sophomore in the Fall.
Thanks and sorry for the long post.. I'll try to revise it after I submit this thread
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