Should I include this under "Research Activity" on my app?

[Dr. JCR]

The summer between my sophomore and junior years, I was involved in a dolphin photo ID project. Basically I sat in front of a computer 15 hours a week for 2 months, looking at dorsal fins of dolphins to see if any of them matched with each other. I wasn't planning on pursuing medicine at the time.
Would this be worth mentioning on my application? If it doesn't fall under "Research Activities," I don't know which section it belongs to.

Thank you for your time.

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[Shirafune]

If this was for a marine ecologist PI (or whatever s/he is), then yes it counts as a research activity. Not in the truest sense of research in terms of designing and conducting experiments, but it sounds like you were only involved in data collection/management.

Just be truthful about your involvement with the project; the adcoms will take it as they want.

 

[Dr. JCR]

If this was for a marine ecologist PI (or whatever s/he is), then yes it counts as a research activity. Not in the truest sense of research in terms of designing and conducting experiments, but it sounds like you were only involved in data collection/management.

Just be truthful about your involvement with the project; the adcoms will take it as they want.

Thank you for the reply. I will just go ahead and include it in my application.

Here's another question:
I started volunteering for another lab after being done with the photo ID project. I attended weekly lab meetings and helped a PhD student with maintaining cultures and collecting samples. Would this count as a research activity? I did this throughout my junior year until I did an undergrad thesis in the same lab as a senior.

 

[Shirafune]

Thank you for the reply. I will just go ahead and include it in my application.

Here's another question:
I started volunteering for another lab after being done with the photo ID project. I attended weekly lab meetings and helped a PhD student with maintaining cultures and collecting samples. Would this count as a research activity? I did this throughout my junior year until I did an undergrad thesis in the same lab as a senior.

Again, you were in a research lab doing things for a project, so yes it counts as research experience. Be honest about what you did and how much you really got involved.

However, I am always interested in how much somebody knows about the project they worked on. It's easy to tell if somebody really knows what they worked on. If you don't know what samples you were collecting or what the rationale was for the experiment, spend some time getting at least the big picture.

 

[Dr. JCR]

Again, you were in a research lab doing things for a project, so yes it counts as research experience. Be honest about what you did and how much you really got involved.

However, I am always interested in how much somebody knows about the project they worked on. It's easy to tell if somebody really knows what they worked on. If you don't know what samples you were collecting or what the rationale was for the experiment, spend some time getting at least the big picture.

Thank you! Very helpful response


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