Speaker 1: Finding research opportunities as an undergrad in STEM is extremely stressful. I know because I've been through that. I always knew that I wanted to do a PhD, so getting that research opportunity was extremely important to me. Even for my friends, though, who weren't sure about grad school, it's still a pretty valuable experience, because figuring out what you don't like is just as important as figuring out what you do like. So as someone who's been through all that stress, was successful in landing several research internships in my undergrad, and now, as a PhD student and a TA, I often find myself giving the same advice to several of my students, I figured it would be a useful thing to make this video and explain to you guys how to get research opportunities as an undergrad or even a high school student. So let's throw a timer on the screen and let's see how long this takes us. Research Opportunities Let's start out with how you can land these opportunities. And the first, most obvious, and easiest way is, of course, to know someone. Whether that be a professor in your classes, whether it be through a family connection, a bit of nepotism isn't always bad. But let's say you don't know anyone. The best way to get to know someone is through your classes. You have professors at your university lecturing you that do research. So a great opportunity is to get them to know you. And to do that, just be a good student. Be interested in your class, raise your hand a lot, participate, ask questions, go to their office hours, approach them after your lecture to ask them questions. If you show engagement, a professor will notice. And I had a lot of friends that got their research opportunities through these sort of strategies. If a professor knows you, then when the summer comes around and they're looking for students, and they have a pile of students applying to them that they don't know, and then there's you, who they do know, who is a driven, motivated student, you have much higher chances of getting that position over everyone else. Now there's a big caveat to this, and that is to be a good person. It sounds silly, but we all know that person in our classes that asks questions just to show that they're smart. The person at office hours that just brings everyone down thinks they're the smartest one in the room and doesn't actually genuinely try to learn from the professor. If you're that person, you're definitely not going to get a research opportunity. You have to have the right attitude. And professors will know if you have the right attitude. If you're a good person and you're genuinely interested, the professor will remember you. Now on the other hand, let's say that doesn't work out for you. It's up to you to contact professors on your own to do some research. The best thing you can do here is just go through the directory list of all the professors at your university and see who you might be interested in working with. I'll show you, for example, the University of Toronto Physics Department has the entire list of professors working in their field with short descriptions of what they do and their contact information. Every single department of every single university in the world has a list like this. So I recommend look at some universities in the area near you, get a short list of professors you might be interested in working with and then move on to the next step of how to actually contact them. A couple tips on this before we move on though. First of all, don't limit yourself to any particular field. So for example, let's say that I think I'm interested in astrophysics. That doesn't mean that I'm only having to apply to astrophysics professors. I can look at any professor in the physics department, any professor in the engineering department, even professors in the chemistry department or biology departments are still a great opportunity if it's my first research experience. You might think that if you choose a research experience in black hole physics you're going to learn a lot about black holes, but that's not really true. The biggest takeaways that you get from undergrad research experiences are what research is actually like, not necessarily the hard skills of the actual subject you're working on. That comes more so in grad school. Undergrad research is there more so to complement your undergrad lectures and give you a taste of what it would be like if you do grad school. Have you work on something independently, but it's going to be a project that realistically you should be able to do. So you're not going to be doing any really hard crazy physics or math anyway. It's probably going to be a lot of programming or it's going to be a lot of experimental work in a lab. And no matter what the field is, a lot of the time that actual work is going to be the same. So don't limit yourself to any one particular subfield. Another related tip is to contact more professors than you think you need to. That short list shouldn't really be a short list. It should be a pretty big list. You got to think that as a first year, second year, you're not really that attractive to profs because let's be honest, there's not much that you know how to do. I had a professor in my third year in a condensed matter physics course that joked around with us and said, I don't know why I pay undergrad research students. They should be paying me. Now at the time I thought she was being a bit hyperbolic, but I get where she's coming from. The amount of effort that a professor has to put in to teaching the undergrad and the resulting return that the undergrad will give the professor, they don't usually add up. This is more of an experience for undergrads. So you got to keep that in mind when you're coming in. You can't compare yourself to a PhD student or to a master's student because you just don't have that same level of experience yet and there's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. So when you're applying, be aware of that. You're probably not going to get the first one, two or three that you apply to. Sometimes you might have to apply even in a double digits to get a single answer back from a professor and that's okay. It's expected. As you get older in your third year, fourth year, when you get more experience, you're going to be much more valuable to a prof. So if you're just starting out, if you're in high school, first year, second year, reach out to more people than you think you need to and be prepared for a lot of rejections because it's going to happen. A third tip is again related to the first two. Start small. It doesn't have to be a world-renowned university. It doesn't have to be a super famous prof. Anything is valuable experience when you're first starting out. Anything that you can put on your resume, if you can get a good reference letter, that's huge and that will let you get that dream research position maybe the next year or the year after. Start small and build up to it. Look at your local universities. Do some research outside of your own field. My first research position was in a biology lab because that's what was available to me even though I was interested in physics. But it got me a reference letter that I was then able to leverage for the next year to get a position in physics. And the fourth tip is about the type of lab that I recommend going to. It's often pretty useful to go to experimental labs because experimental labs are often better suited towards first, second years. Like I said before, you just don't have that much experience when you're first starting out. So you can't expect, for example, to join a high-energy theory particle physics group and to do fantastic things. There's just not much you'll be able to do there because there's not much you know how to do there, and that's fine. Whereas an experimental group, there are actual things that you can do. You can be in the lab working with the instruments, calibrating them, setting up some sort of machine if you know how to program, encoding up some experiments, doing some data analysis on some experimental results as well. These sort of projects are much more suited towards an undergrad. When I was in my second year, I worked in an atmospheric physics lab. And I was tasked with working on a machine that tracks the sun so that you can do atmospheric solar measurements. And I had no idea how to program. I was completely useless. So I didn't really accomplish much over that summer, to be honest. But there was a high school student who was working in my lab that same summer. And this high school student didn't have the same physics education that I did. I already had two years of physics undergrad. But this guy was an amazing programmer. And so he was actually much more useful to my professor than I was. So that goes to show you that depending on your skills, there are certain things that you can do. You should be smart about what to look for and be aware of which kind of professors you can apply to that might be more receptive to taking you on as an undergrad. So let's say you have your short list now. You're ready to contact some profs. How do we do this? The best way to do it is through email. You're going to want to keep it short. Introduce yourself. Tell them a little bit about yourself. Tell them why you're interested in working in their lab and why you think their research is cool. And then attach some important information like your resume, your transcript. The more that you can personalize the email to them, the better. Here's an example. Let's say that I was an undergrad and I want to contact my current supervisor to do some research in computational fluid dynamics or computational physics. Dear Professor X, my name is Alex and I'm a second year undergrad student at the University of Toronto looking to do some research in your lab this summer. I'm very interested in computational fluid dynamics because I think it's really interesting how we can write simulations to approximate real world physics. I'm very interested in your research because of the application to aircraft design and I would love to be able to learn more from you and have the opportunity to work in your group. I have taken advanced vector calculus and an introductory fluid mechanics course and I have also been involved in the undergrad physics group where we give lectures to each other talking about physics. This is just an example of the sort of things you can talk about yourself. I wanted to ask if you would be open to taking any students this summer. If you are, I would love to have an opportunity to chat. I have attached my transcript and resume and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Alex Berczyk. You're also going to attach your resume. Try to keep it to one or two pages max. List all the research experience you do, some extracurriculars, awards that you've won and anything really that shows that you're a dedicated student, that you're motivated. If you can, also attach your transcript because the professor, more likely than not, if they're interested, they're going to ask for your transcript anyway so this just saves them some time. The best time to send these emails, if you're looking to start in the summer, for example, is December to January. So you want to start at least five months in advance. That's usually when professors are looking for students and will start interviewing. If you haven't heard back from the professor in a week and a half, feel free to email them back again and just say, Dear Professor X, in case you missed my previous email, I'm an interested student and would greatly appreciate the opportunity. Please let me know if you're willing to take on students. Sincerely, Alex Berczyk. Now, if after that second email, you still don't hear back from them, move on. Professors are very busy people and they don't often get the chance to reply to every email. I've been ghosted many times by professors in my years so it's okay. Expect to be ghosted. Move on. This is also why you should be emailing multiple professors at the same time. Try to email three professors at a time and if you don't hear from any of the three, move on. Sometimes you'll hear back from one that says they're not taking on students. Sometimes you'll hear back from some offering you an interview and then you may or may not get an offer from that. But like I said, keep your options open. Keep the email short because if they get a long email, most of the time they just won't read it at all. And then don't be too attached to any particular professor. So if you don't hear back from them, that's okay. Just move on and try again next year. Now an alternative to all of this is to look for dedicated research competitions. These are designed to specifically select a group of undergrad students and place them directly with a supervisor to work with. That research opportunity that I did in atmospheric physics in my second year was exactly through this. It was the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship offered by the University of Toronto. But there are lots of these and almost every university has them. I also did one in my third year at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Although I never ended up accepting it, I was also offered a position by DadRise. This is an amazing program that takes undergrad students from Canada, the US and the UK and I think a couple other countries and will pair them with research groups in Germany and they'll pay you to fly over there and do some research there. There are similar opportunities at Caltech that I know of. I'll try to list a couple of those in the description down below but really this is up to you to try and find these positions. For these, the application process is usually slightly different. You will have to write a cover letter, a one or two page document explaining why you're interested in doing this research opportunity and here you can go into more detail. The detail that you wanted to put in that email that you couldn't, you can put into this document. And each competition has their own separate rules so there isn't too much I can tell you but the biggest piece of advice is that in this cover letter or statement of purpose, you have to show enthusiasm. This has to be the thing that you want to do. The people who are selecting students from this group aren't always necessarily selecting the smartest or the ones with the best courses. They're going to be selecting the students that are the most interested, that have the most enthusiasm because in research, that's the most important thing. It's not how smart you are. It's not how good your grades are. It's how much you're actually going to work. Will you put in the effort whether you're demotivated, if the project's not working, will you be there to put in the hours and to try to do something useful. That's what they're looking for. So if you can transmit that in your statement of purpose, you stand a good chance to get the research opportunity. And the perks of this is that usually it comes with automatic funding so that's a great option to look for. Now to wrap it all up, there are two smaller questions that I get asked a lot. The first one being, do grades matter? And the answer is, kind of, but not as much as you honestly think. Like I explained, the most important thing in research is not how smart you are, but how hard you're going to work, how motivated you are. Grades are usually taken as a cut-off. If they're okay, you're fine. If they're good, you're fine. And then it depends on other factors. Now if your grades are bad, that might be indicative of a problem and that might make the professor hesitant to take you on. But they're really not all that important. As long as you have decent grades, so you're about average at least, then there really makes no difference. If you have bad grades, but you can explain why you have bad grades and show that you're doing your best to improve, that's still really good. Just think that, whether you have a 95 or a 75, that doesn't necessarily translate to how good you're going to be in the lab. The biggest thing is how hard you're going to work and that depends on you. You have to transmit that through your statement of purpose and then you have to put in that good work to get that reference letter for the next opportunity. Because if you have a professor that vouches for you, that said, this guy worked so hard, that's going to help you so much for the next time that you look for a research opportunity. Another question that I often get asked is how realistic is it that I'm going to be paid? And here I have to say, it really depends. If you're applying through one of those competitions that are paid, then it's easy. You're going to be paid because that's the nature of the competition. Sometimes the winner gets $4,000. Sometimes it's $10,000. Sometimes it's somewhere in between or you're getting a stipend. Those are great. If you go the alternative route where you're contacting professors directly, sometimes you might get paid. The professor often has funds for undergrad students where they can give you a small stipend. If a professor has agreed to take you on, there are usually scholarships that you can apply to. For example, here in Canada, you have the National Science and Engineering Research Council, NSERC, and these often fund a lot of undergrad students, although those awards are quite prestigious and quite competitive. But there are lots of other smaller funds that you can often apply to. And if you're someone who's in a financial situation where you do really need the funding, that's tricky. And you should probably search around until you can find a professor that can afford to pay you for the summer. Otherwise, you might have to expect for your first time doing research to not get paid. Remember that this is a fantastic opportunity for you to get that experience and to get that reference. Once you have your first reference and your first experience on paper, it's going to help you so much to get the second or the third. Maybe you'll be offered another position back in the same lab next year with the same prof where they'll pay you. And maybe you don't. But if you don't, you have that experience and you have that reference to get you a better position next year, closer to what you want to do, and hopefully with better funding. So I think that's a wrap. I threw a lot of information at you guys. How did we do on time? Hopefully not too bad. I know it's a stressful time. We've all been through it. But the simple fact that you're watching this video and you're dedicated to finding a research position, that already says a lot. So don't give up if you get rejected the first couple times. As long as you're dedicated, you're going to make it happen. I believe in you. When I was an undergrad, Gunjan from this channel was my TA. And I looked up to him and I was stressing about undergrad research and I wasn't even sure if I was going to get into grad school. And Gunjan just seemed like the smartest, most successful person I knew at the time. Because he was living my dream. He was doing a PhD in physics. But then he told me something that I'll never forget. He said, the only difference between me and you is that I'm older than you and I've had more experiences. If I could do it and my friends could do it, there's no reason why you can't do it. Just put in the effort and you'll be rewarded for it. Good luck guys.