Goldwater Scholarship & Research - Poster presentations?

About the Ads
Az1698

Az1698

Membership Revoked
Removed
10+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
263
Reaction score
0
Hey,
I am interested in winning the goldwater scholarship. I have heard that you have to be well versed in research, so I have a few questions.

  1. Does the # of places your present a poster have an impact on winning the award? How do you get positions to present your poster? How many is a good # to shoot for?
  2. What else can you do to increase your chances? Does medical research in high school help?
  3. do publications factor in at all?
Thank you!
Members don't see this ad.
 
anyone know?
 
Az1698 said:
Hey,
I am interested in winning the goldwater scholarship. I have heard that you have to be well versed in research, so I have a few questions.

  1. Does the # of places your present a poster have an impact on winning the award? How do you get positions to present your poster? How many is a good # to shoot for?
  2. What else can you do to increase your chances? Does medical research in high school help?
  3. do publications factor in at all?
Thank you!
Click to expand...

The Goldwater process is a bit complicated, so I'll explain a bit first, and then answer your questions.

First of all, each school can nominate a maximum of 4 students for the Goldwater scholarship. At my school (and I'm sure at many others), there is an internal competition to determine the nominees.

The application is pretty simple and straightforward. They ask for information about your grades and coursework. There's also a section for honors and awards, and a section for extracurricular activities. There are a few questions about your motivation for a career in research that can really be answered honestly (I know for a fact that one of the questions is used primarily for the press release that accompanies winning the scholarship).

Finally, there are two really important sections: research experience and the research proposal. The research experience section is self explanatory. From what I understand, the research proposal is a very important component of the application. You're supposed to come up with an idea for a project and write up a two page proposal. This is how they gauge aptitude for research. Oh, and they ask for letters of recommendation, which are also really important, and should not be from people who can't comment about your potential as a researcher.

Ok, so now to answer your questions:

1. When I applied for the scholarship, I had only presented two posters, both at an undergraduate research forum at my school. Presenting posters is just a component of your research experience, and it's good to have presented your work, but you don't have to present at an international conference or something for it to be significant.

2. First of all, high school research is fine, and will probably help your application, but it's important to point out that it'll help because it was research, not because it was in high school (in other words, doing research in high school is good because you were doing research, not because it's amazing that a high school student can do research). Whether or not the research is medically related is irrelevant.

The best thing you can do to increase your chances is to get good grades and be very active in research. Join a lab when you get to college and work hard, ask for an independent research project as soon as you are comfortable working independently. By independent, I mean it's entirely your project, you don't work for a grad student or a post-doc. Make sure your PI knows you and likes you (I think smaller labs are best for undergrads). Extracurricular activities are only marginally important, so don't make those a priority. Research is the most important thing.

3. I did not have a publication when I submitted my application. It helps, it definitely helps (by publication, I mean a first or second authored publication), but it is by no means necessary.

To be honest with you, I am very honored to have gotten the Goldwater Scholarship, but as someone said on SDN a couple of weeks ago, the Goldwater Scholarship isn't exactly the most competitive scholarship out there. It's the top math, science, and engineering scholarship, but they give it to over 300 people, which means that it's not nearly as competitive as Rhodes or something similar.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Thanks for the info man! A few more questions

-for poster presentations, the more the merrier?
-for the reserach proposal, could it be on something you've been doing research on?
-how do you get into a lab for reserach? I hear that you just ask professors, is that true?
 
Az1698 said:
Thanks for the info man! A few more questions

-for poster presentations, the more the merrier?
-for the reserach proposal, could it be on something you've been doing research on?
-how do you get into a lab for reserach? I hear that you just ask professors, is that true?
Click to expand...

Well, i mean, sure, the more poster presentations the better, but i mean, beyond a certain point it probably doesn't help that much. the focus should be to develop good research skills and become as good of a researcher as you can possibly be. To be honest with you, I'm not a fan of poster presentations, just because I think the format is a little silly. But attending meetings is an enriching experience, and it helps to attend a few, but my point is, present posters when it would make sense to present posters. Don't go out of your way to present a poster or go to a meeting just because you think it'll help you for Goldwater. Go if you're interested in the meeting or if your lab group is going.

For the proposal, it can be on something you're working on. It just has to be presented as a novel research proposal (you're not lying about it, because you'll mention the project in your research description, you just need to present it as if it were a new proposal). What I did was I used an idea that I had come up with but that I had been working on. I presented it as a new proposal, but then mentioned some preliminary results.

Getting into a lab is usually pretty easy. I got into the lab I work in the summer before my freshman year of college. I skimmed through faculty lists and found something that I was interested in (ok, it's a stretch to say I was interested in it, I didn't really understand any of it, but I recognized the word acetyl-CoA in the description and was like, hey, i know about that) and I emailed the guy. He emailed the next day and I've worked for him ever since. As I said, I'd recommend trying to find a smaller lab, since your PI will not be as busy and since he/she will be more able to work with you directly.

Another piece of advice is to avoid working for a graduate student or postdoc if at all possible. There's nothing wrong with working for them, but if you work independently, you learn a lot more. My PI gave me the option of working with a grad student when my first project wasn't working well, since the grad student had publishable data and he thought I'd be likely to be second author if I helped him with it. I refused, and I'm glad I did, since, two years later, the grad student still hasn't published his stuff, and I published a 1st authored paper a few months ago. The reason I tell you this is that, no matter what, it's better for you to work independently.

Actually, the reason I'm giving you all this advice is not for the Goldwater Scholarship. This is what I would recommend if you want to get the best possible undergraduate research experience. I think you should stop thinking about Goldwater for now (I assume you're a high school senior?) so you have a couple years before you need to apply. Do research (or more research if you have been doing some already) and if you like it, keep doing it and apply for Goldwater when the time comes. If you find you don't like research, that's fine too, just do something else, and don't apply for Goldwater.
 
advice from others:

I'm a sophomore. I have a 3.95cum, but 8 A+'s that do not receive extra weight and may have helped somewhat. My proposal was about the research project that I have been working on for the past year, which I will continue through graduation.

My advice (mostly stuff that my faculty representative stressed) is, of course, to have a super-high GPA. I don't agree with the other poster that you need a 4.0. I didn't, and I don't think that anybody else who won from my institution this year had one either. It may depend on the institution, though. I think as long as you have a 3.9+ then you are good to go in that category. I really think that most everybody who even applies already has the GPA of 3.9 or above, so this can't help or hurt your application too much. I think that things like this are more about how your application is presented through essays and the overall picture (see below).

Course overloads and honors science courses are stressed a lot. One of my recommenders emphasized the rigor of my courseload, and I managed to slip in somewhere how I will have taken about 10 grad-level science courses before I graduate.

The research is key, obviously. You need to make a cohesive application that, for the most part, centers around your undergraduate research and is consistent with your long-term career goal. In my case, I had a letter of rec from the research supervisor, I talked about my research in the research experience section, I talked about the project in another essay, and then my entire proposal was about my project. This created a cohesive application that read easily.

There are two components of most successful applications: cohesion and clarity. I was just talking about this with my dad, who is on adcoms for a variety of things at a medical school (general med admissions, residency, fellowship, special NIH scholarships, you name it). The faculty readers are very busy people, and any vague or unclear statements detract significantly from your application because the readers have to stop and determine what you mean, or worse, they simply gloss over the unclear statement and thus your application is not improved by that portion. And the readers don't give these applications as much time as you think, so you want your application to be very cohesive. With a cohesive application, the reader gains the sense that the applicant has a clear understanding of their present situation and their future, and also can more easily recall the strong points of the application (e.g. "the kid who studies C. elegans development and wants to become a developmental biologist" rather than "the kid who studies ribosomes but wants to become an ornithologist"). It doesn't really matter whether you actually plan to become a developmental biologist--you're only 19 (20 now!) and everybody changes their minds. But you need your application to be cohesive.

So I guess my biggest piece of advice is to be sure that your entire application is very clearly understandable and cohesive. Perfecting my application to this level took a number of hours. Have your faculty representative and a faculty member unrelated to the process read it and circle anything that is not immediately understandable to them; then see how you can fix it. I perfected the essays for many hours, then had both of my parents and my faculty advisor read my application before I submitted it to my faculty representative. Then a committee read through it and identified anything that needed to be changed.
 
-How hard is to get an independent research project ?
-Who do you ask ?
-How do you ask ?
 
tennisball80 said:
-How hard is to get an independent research project ?
-Who do you ask ?
-How do you ask ?
Click to expand...

Well, first you have to join a lab. As an undergrad, it helps to join a small lab. Big labs are ok, but you probably won't have an independent project and will probably be washing dishes the whole time or working for a graduate student.

Now, in a small lab, the PI will probably start you on simple chores, so work hard at those. Once you've been there for a while, tell him/her that you're interested in having a project, and that you would love to try to do it independently. That usually works, although you might have a grad student/postdoc watching you.
 
Could anyone post a sucessful resume?
 
sleepy425 said:
When I get some time I'll try to post an anonymous version of mine. Might be a week or so though, sorry
Click to expand...

Wow sleepy that would be great! If you feel uncofortable posting the edited resume, you could PM me.

I have a question - what is the outline of the application? What is the most important part?
 
I've heard amgen scholars make you competitive for this - true or false?
 
Dreaming big said:
I've heard amgen scholars make you competitive for this - true or false?
Click to expand...

Well, so I just looked up what that was (although I've heard of it before), and yes, something like that would make you more competitive for it. But I doubt that it would carry any more weight than any other summer undergraduate research program. In my case, when I applied, I had done two Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) summer undergraduate research programs. The point is that, it doesn't really matter what sort of summer program you get into, as long as you get into one and you get the research experience. None of the 4 Goldwater scholars from my school in my year had done Amgen. Either two or 3 of us (I can't remember) had done HHMI programs.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
sleepy425 said:
Well, so I just looked up what that was (although I've heard of it before), and yes, something like that would make you more competitive for it. But I doubt that it would carry any more weight than any other summer undergraduate research program. In my case, when I applied, I had done two Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) summer undergraduate research programs. The point is that, it doesn't really matter what sort of summer program you get into, as long as you get into one and you get the research experience. None of the 4 Goldwater scholars from my school in my year had done Amgen. Either two or 3 of us (I can't remember) had done HHMI programs.
Click to expand...

Could you explain the HHMI program?
 
Question: any winter or spring research programs?
 
Az1698 said:
Anyone?
Click to expand...

I'm going to say no. Really isn't that much you can learn in that short of time that you couldn't learn in a week or two in a lab, if that. It's been my experience that most of the pre-med and science programs available for high school students tend to be glorified summer camps.
 
Two of my friends won goldwaters, it's really all about working closely with your advising office/scholarship office, and getting lots and lots of research experience done. I had bad advising (was told that pre-meds didn't qualify!), so I didn't really pursue it. Honeslty, my research is with ants and it seems like that isn't a heavily favored area of study anyways :D
 
I'm applying this year for one. Hopefully I can do it!
 
mmmcdowe said:
Two of my friends won goldwaters, it's really all about working closely with your advising office/scholarship office, and getting lots and lots of research experience done. I had bad advising (was told that pre-meds didn't qualify!), so I didn't really pursue it. Honeslty, my research is with ants and it seems like that isn't a heavily favored area of study anyways :D
Click to expand...

Are there any ec's beside research that they care about?
 
Az1698 said:
I see. Question: What is a TA and what do they do?
Click to expand...

TA= teaching assistant. They are a professor's assistants and can have many duties. There are two big categories: class TA's and lab TA's. Class TA's sometimes lecture, but generally are involved with grading, homework help, and test writing. They tend to be pretty behind the scenes, but are the guys you go to when you can't get help directly from the prof. Lab TA's are involved in laboratory portions of a lecture. At my school, they are present during the entire lab section, and are there to guide and assist you through it. They also are involved in lab quizzes and grade your lab reports. Some lab classes have a professor that lectures during the recitation part of the class, others have your lab TA do it.
 
mmmcdowe said:
Two of my friends won goldwaters, it's really all about working closely with your advising office/scholarship office, and getting lots and lots of research experience done. I had bad advising (was told that pre-meds didn't qualify!), so I didn't really pursue it. Honeslty, my research is with ants and it seems like that isn't a heavily favored area of study anyways :D
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, premeds only qualify for the Goldwater Scholarship if they are fully intent on pursuing a career in research. In other words, if you want to go into private practice, you're not supposed to be eligible for Goldwater. If you want to get an MD, but plan on pursuing a career in research (can be basic science or clinical), then you are eligible. Obviously, if you do MD/PhD you're probably going to be eligible for Goldwater (unless you're an idiot and are just doing it for the free med school but then want to go into private practice).
 
Dreaming big said:
Could anyone post a sucessful resume?
Click to expand...

I have written something up that summarizes my application. I will PM it to you since you requested it, and anyone else who wants it can PM me and I'll send it to you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

B
IVY vs JHU ( Full Scholarship) vs BSMD
2
Replies
55
Views
7K
sliceofsupreme
S
A
USC or UCLA for pre-med track (COST is exactly same due to scholarships)?
Replies
9
Views
3K
enchantments
enchantments
M
Presentation topics that all sorts of doctors can give to high schoolers?
Replies
0
Views
1K
Mangy
M
N
Amherst College vs USC w/ Presidential Scholarship
Replies
20
Views
3K
tessellations
tessellations
A
  • Poll
Solid Public University (with Full Ride) vs. University of Pennsylvania (with half-ride scholarship)
Replies
37
Views
5K
sosoyumi
sosoyumi
Top