Research Experience?

[HELPMEMD]

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[On Eagle's Wings]

How did your interaction with this professor end? Did he give you feedback as to what needed to change so that it would be profitable? It sounds like you worked on it a lot and learned a lot. What follow-up was there? Did he write you a letter of rec? Was he pleased with the work you put in on your project? Lots of unanswered questions before I can determine if this experience was good.

It is good that you are working in a lab doing actual experiments!

 

[jd989898]

A significant part of modern research is studying existing literature to obtain information relevant to your own investigation. As science advances exponentially, it's difficult to stumble upon an observable aspect of the universe in 2015 that is both totally untouched by documented science and worth studying. Just talk about your ideas, and how the literature you studied helped you formulate hypotheses and plan possible tests. IMO, adcoms should understand that undergraduates have last dibs on grant money & other resources.

 

[HELPMEMD]

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[Goro]

Reading up on the literature is not research, in the way we want you to demonstrate that you know something about the Scientific Principal.

It will come off really bad. Imagine this:

Me: So tell me about your research.
You: I didn't do any research during time X because the PI didn't have any money, but I read up a lot on the subject.

I have a question about an experience a wrote about on my amcas primary. I discussed how I was given the opportunity to devise my own experiment under the supervision of a professor. After we devised the experiment, my supervisor told me he did not think he could use his grant money to run the experiment. I spent nearly hundreds of hours reading about pedagogical research and planning the experiment with him so I mentioned it. I recently began research in a physiology lab because I know its important to have experience actually running an experiment. Will it sound bad when I explain this in my interviews?

 

[HELPMEMD]

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[On Eagle's Wings]

Did you list this reading literature project as a separate experience? How did you describe it? Did you explain what you learned and what you did?

 

[jd989898]

Well since adcoms only care about research experience if it involves you directly implementing the scientific method, you should basically do whatever you can in secondaries & interviews to couple what you wrote in the activity description to the scientific method. Talk about how you made an original observation, and how the literature you studied provided background knowledge to generate an informed, original hypothesis. Then, perhaps talk about how you came up with a way to theoretically test that hypothesis, and what different results of this theoretical experiment would allow you to conclude.

Obviously, don't lie. I'm just assuming this is along the lines of what you did. And if you've already written that you couldn't actually do an experiment, saying something like what I described above would be the best option you have at this point IMO. Keep in mind I'm just a premed, though.

 

[HELPMEMD]

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[HELPMEMD]

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[Goro]

A lack of research experience will be lethal for the research powerhouses like Duke or Pitt, but there are schools where it's less of an issue. Plus, you say that you've just started in a Physio lab, so there's that to play up.

Bump.

@Goro do you think this will break me when it comes to the interview assuming the rest of my app is strong and I never placed an emphasis on research in my app?

Also, will doing as jd989898 suggested be my best plan of action?

Thanks for all the help everyone

 

[HELPMEMD]

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