Undergraduate research experience

It is very late in the year for the REPU admission process to end, but many things kept postponing the different deadlines of the process to put us where we are now. Almost mid-December and only a handful of students have received final offers. Fortunately, the others are not far away from hearing from us.

For another year I had the granted opportunity to read over many applicants' paperwork to a specific branch of REPU: nanotechnology.

I have realized that many of the applicants do not qualify for the basic requirement of the REPU internship, which is to provide a research experience to deepen undergraduates' training in research.

It is ok if you are in your early undergraduate years and have not accumulated enough or any research experience at all – there is still time to gather it. On the other hand, I saw senior students that listed a few research experiences that when I asked deeper questions turned out to be undeveloped research experiences.

What I want to convey is something unfortunate, that every year there is a wrongly utilization our REPU resources. There were folks that arrived at the interview phase because they crafted their research experiences and made them look as if they were more qualified than when asked specifically about parts of their CV.

I try to remind myself that I am not a gatekeeper, but I could help these people either.

The process needs to improve to help us, to help them. So that they can know what we are looking for, not that we vaguely ask about describing your research in general.

I need to understand if the listed experience was part of a team project or alone. That they tell me with personal pronouns what parts they did – in the past tense; I do not need to read what are they planning to do. A few added sentences in the application form will help.