My undergrad research experience doesn't really match my grad interests?

[Shellhead]

I've been working in an evolution lab since my freshman year of undergrad, but now that graduate school is approaching, I'm not certain I'd like to focus on evolution. At this point I feel that it would be better to see the project through than to jump ship for another lab. How vital is it that my undergrad research experience reflect my current interests? Is it going to hurt me in the long run?

[jujubea]

How far off are your topics and interests?

 

I have some pretty divergent undergrad research experience, but there is some overlap, and what I did was emphasize the relevant skills I built during undergrad, for use during grad. For instance, I learned to code and analyze interview transcripts, and even though the topic and content and results and application of the interview data has NOTHING to do with what I want to study in grad school, the skillset of knowing how to code and analyze verbal data is still useful for this other field. 

 

In short, I emphasized my research experience skills rather than my research experience topics.

[GeoDUDE!]

I don't think it matters at all(most of the time).... people overestimate the importance of undergraduate research experience, but most professors know its canned, designed to succeed so it wont put off the undergrad. Most undergrads face little adversity in their research because of this, and you become more experienced, you'll realize often the most interesting questions come along with their share of frustrations. 

[Eigen]

I tell my undergrads it doesn't really matter. 

 

I made a huge switch from undergrad to grad school, and it took a bit of playing catch up, but none of the schools had an issue with it. 

 

The research experience (hopefully) shows that you know how to organize a project, that you can learn things you need to know, and that you have experience with the reality of research. 

 

Those are the most important transferable skills- new technically abilities and new knowledge can pretty easily be obtained when you start in a new area. 

[Catria]

I don't think it matters at all(most of the time).... people overestimate the importance of undergraduate research experience, but most professors know [undergraduate research] is canned, designed to succeed so it wont put off the undergrad. Most undergrads face little adversity in their research because of this, and you become more experienced, you'll realize often the most interesting questions come along with their share of frustrations. 

 

How would profs be able to... design a project (or a component thereof) so that the undergrad assigned to it won't be put off? Research, by and large, is a highly volatile endeavor.

 

Of course, a prof won't be able to know in advance that a project (or component) will succeed.

 

What I dislike most of European PhDs is that, often, you have a pretty tight time limit to complete the project you choose (or you get assigned), giving you little wiggle room in the event your project goes awry, and projects are supposedly designed so that the risk of failure is fairly manageable.

 

In fact, the importance actually granted to undergraduate research experience is highly field-dependent. Pure mathematics is a field where little emphasis is placed on it, when compared to, say, chemistry.

 

I tell my undergrads it doesn't really matter. 

 

I made a huge switch from undergrad to grad school, and it took a bit of playing catch up, but none of the schools had an issue with it. 

 

The research experience (hopefully) shows that you know how to organize a project, that you can learn things you need to know, and that you have experience with the reality of research. 

 

Those are the most important transferable skills- new technically abilities and new knowledge can pretty easily be obtained when you start in a new area. 

 

And some admissions committees will understand that a project may have turned off a student from a subfield, or an approach in a subfield, but the student still retained a drive for the field or research in general.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Catria

[Plissken]

Undergraduate research is more about the experience than the specific content/focus/topic, as far as most graduate programs are concerned. It's more about learning how the research process works, and the transferrable knowledge/skills acquired from participating in it, than anything else.

[GeoDUDE!]

How would profs be able to... design a project (or a component thereof) so that the undergrad assigned to it won't be put off? Research, by and large, is a highly volatile endeavor.

 

Of course, a prof won't be able to know in advance that a project (or component) will succeed.

 

I disagree with this premise heavily, most notably because for this to be true you have to set the objective level of what constitute success as a researcher very high.  In my mind, if there is a long list of scientific tasks to do, and you can check just one of those boxes, you have succeeded. Doing something, and saying it doesn't work is just as important as the discovery of Penicillin, and is in fact, the basis of modern scientific inquiry.   

 

My first project as a freshman was looking at optical properties of matter by sending certain wavelength light at the material, and sure the results weren't interesting, but they were cataloged (and eventually published). Any time you are collecting data, or doing an already established methodology, chances are the project will succeed to some degree. 

 

The level of work required by someone doing a PhD generally involves much more uncertainties (and rightfully so). A seismologist may have to leave an array of seismometers out in the field for years only to find that his data is corrupted at the end of it. 

 

 

Doing this work as an undergraduate, to some degree is important, because you need to be able to make an argument about your potential as a researcher, but there are other successful ways of making that argument besides doing undergraduate research, for the reasons stated above. In fields where there isn't much undergraduate research, that is because it is hard to design simple, sort term projects. One of the great things about my field (earth sciences) is that it is relatively easy to design these things.