Advice/Help for Research as Undergraduate

[kabuki]

Hello,

I am a sophomore at a small state school. I want to get started doing some research so I can get into graduate school.

I've thought about doing research with professors. However, at my school the professors are not active in research, and they don't take on undergraduate students to help out.

In my senior year there is a mandatory two-course sequence for a research project which will be supported by professors. This will be a good opportunity, but since this will be finished the last semester of my senior year, it will probably be too late to be place on graduate school applications.

The only other option I can think of is doing research on my own. I don't know where to start. I've started looking at other published research and honestly it's a little overwhelming. I would appreciate any kind of pointers/advice on how to get this process started. Thank you!

Regards,

David

[ma7eb4i]

You might want to consider applying for summer fellowships or internships as research opportunities. Many offer research funds and stipends for few months. Dunno what your research interests are, but if they are along the lines of biomedical, here are some links:

NSF REU: http://www.nsf.gov/c.../reu_search.cfm

HHMI Summer Students: http://www.hhmi.org/...er_student.html

NIH: http://www.training....ov/student/sip/

Many schools have SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) Programs which a quick Google search would probably pull up.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Edited December 30, 2009 by ma7eb4i

[kabuki]

My major is computer science. Thank you for reply - I'm going to look into those programs :-)

[eucalyptus]

You could also try checking out labs/departments at other schools you're interested in to see if they'll take you on as a summer research student. Lots of labs (in psych, at least) do official summer research programs, and many others might take you on without an official program for it. You might even get a chance to work in a lab you'd like to join as a grad student!