Will research experience help?

[virginiarunninggirl]

Through a friend, I have an opportunity to work on a research project at Harvard in the upcoming months. It will be in a lab and neuroscience  based. I am not sure how involved I will be, but my question is this... Will it immensely help my application? Before I go crash out on someone's couch, I need to be assured that having a recommendation letter from a Harvard doctor and research/lab experience will be worth it.

[DeafAudi]

Go for it! I think that sounds like a fantastic opportunity. None of us can tell you how it will pan out in the end but from what I have heard, the schools really like to see research experience and a LOR from a prominent doctor in the field will help immensely.

Edited January 17, 2014 by DeafAudi

[lisa19]

I think it can depending on the experience you have. I wrote about it in my statement of purpose and got a letter of recommendation from the professor I did research for. While I cannot say with certainty, I am pretty sure that strengthened my application. For NYU, one of their essay questions was specifically about research, so it was very beneficial to be able to talk about previous research in that essay.