Trapped in a dead-end Senior Project while having No offer...

[lenzslaw]

Hey guys, 

 

I am a senior undergrad applying for EE 15 Fall PhDs, in the field of nanophotonics. 

While I changed my major from Biomedical Engineering to Electrical Engineering during sophomore year, two of my somehow fruitful research experiences in CV are not relevant to EE at all (genetic engineering actually) and the only related research I do have is my senior project, which I tried to mention in my SOP/CV...but now I am trapped in a dead-end bad project. How should I prove that I may be as qualified as other applicants while having no publications/research progress when contacting a potential professor? 

 

I am attending my undergrad is in a 3rd-world university. It has a super-mini EE department (<30 Profs and half of them are actually in BME)  The group I work for senior project has no serious publication for two years...and what they (try to) do is silicon integrated optics...after desperately working on some nonlinear in silicon devices(nonlinear in silicon devices!) with NO permission to clean room (a.k.a waiting for some post-doc to make device for me to test on) and get NO workable device actually...see, that's the dead-end of the first semester. My supervisor says, well-yeah, why don't we start to work on nonlinearity on photonic crystals? 

So now, I (am being forced to) try to work on nonlinearity in photonic crystal while NOBODY else in this university has ever worked on PhC, (except a new-coming AP who just had a fresh start and hasn't got any PhD candidates yet) and I have less than 3 months left to make some 'reportable results', and it must to be linked to nonlinearity since it has to be a continue of my one and only one senior project, for me to graduate (as defined by the department).  

 

Meanwhile, I am trying to deal with the fact that I got ZERO phd offer up to now...

 

I don't want to give up though. I am still working on things desperately, self-learning everything...I think I'll keep a log of my updates here if it's not too disrupting. 

 

Anyone get similar experiences? I would super-appreciate it for your comment/discussion....

Edited February 11, 2015 by lenzslaw

[TakeruK]

You don't have to have a successful senior project that results in a ton of publications in order to get into grad school. Having serious research experience (i.e. multiple projects over many  years, as you have) will generally put you above average in terms of how much research experience the typical graduate school applicant has. I would say that most people do not have a fully successful and complete senior project by the time they apply to graduate school (most people will not publish at all, and those that do generally wrap it up in the first year of graduate school).

 

The important part is that you have research experience and learning how to work on research during your undergraduate degree. 

 

I don't know what the rest of your application looks like, but I think you don't have to worry too much about the dead end senior project. At this point, I think you might want to consider what your project goals are and make sure that you are able to get something useful out of the project (i.e. what kind of skill or experience can you learn from finishing up this project?) Papers are nice, but at the undergraduate level, research experience is more about learning and developing core research skills for future work. 

[lenzslaw]

Thanks for your reply! Feeling better now...

 

I was worried that a lot of EE applicants for PhD are holding first-author publications, or second/third author publications in top journals, while I don't have one. It seems to make me less competent, since that my undergrad univ is also not a high-ranking one in engineering world (we do have good anthropology/Chinese medicine/Chinese literature etc. o.o). I applied to six US grad schools this round,  not all of them are the top-ones (say among top-10), but still I haven't heard anything back, thus I am a bit anxious. 

 

I sincerely hope that all labs could take undergrad research more seriously though...It seems extremely hard to have some grad student helping in fabrication devices (since we undergrads are not paying them) and also, undergrads are not allowed to fabricate anything. Maybe not everyone does, but I do take my senior project seriously. 

 

I talked with my supervisor earlier yesterday and I think the focus of the project turns into simulations now. Anyway thanks a lot for your kind reply. 

 

 

 

 

You don't have to have a successful senior project that results in a ton of publications in order to get into grad school. Having serious research experience (i.e. multiple projects over many  years, as you have) will generally put you above average in terms of how much research experience the typical graduate school applicant has. I would say that most people do not have a fully successful and complete senior project by the time they apply to graduate school (most people will not publish at all, and those that do generally wrap it up in the first year of graduate school).

 

The important part is that you have research experience and learning how to work on research during your undergraduate degree. 

 

I don't know what the rest of your application looks like, but I think you don't have to worry too much about the dead end senior project. At this point, I think you might want to consider what your project goals are and make sure that you are able to get something useful out of the project (i.e. what kind of skill or experience can you learn from finishing up this project?) Papers are nice, but at the undergraduate level, research experience is more about learning and developing core research skills for future work. 

Edited February 12, 2015 by lenzslaw