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- Apr 5, 2017
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Hi, I hope you're all doing well. I would love your insight on the SR essay. I know this is kind of late but either way my MCAT won't be in until the end of September so I also sort of idiotically put off the PS and essay as well.
Anyway, I've had a bunch of research experiences at roughly 6 different labs. 4 were during/right after high school. The first three were short term-ish, even though for one I worked with someone who is reasonably famous. The fourth, I was involved in from 2012 to August 2014, so the summer before college and it was by far my most significant and meaningful research experience. I spent a crazy amount of time at the lab and barely went to school, I basically worked as an inept postdoc (made plenty of mistakes and learned a lot), had a ridiculous amount of freedom considering the equipment that we were using and this experience is what made me really want to be a scientist and that I could happily spent 10 hours in the lab. I obviously am very close to this PI still and he wrote me a reference letter.
In college, despite being at a top school, the research experiences haven't been as fulfilling or fruitful for me. Maybe the first year and a half I worked in a lab that was really focused on a technique that effectively mass collected data and doing analysis. I had really minimal freedom. The project that I was working on got pretty badly delayed in the school year, and then I switched to a really technical engineering based project that moved slowly, and then for the second summer, I went back to the more biological project but basically the group I was with promised me I could do more histology et al but literally nothing came of it, so I was stuck trying to analyze data...which I sucked at. The second lab I went to does more biological work but basically I have been collecting and analyzing data for a paper that I will be on. I made one interesting finding but the PI doesn't really want to go too deep, so, eh.
Anyway, I would really like to detail my experience with the fourth lab since it was so important for me but much of the time doesn't fall within the typical window. I obviously intend on writing detailed stuff on the latter two, but will it be okay to include some stuff that happened before the summer before college? Second - can I list the earlier HS dates?
Thanks a lot!
Anyway, I've had a bunch of research experiences at roughly 6 different labs. 4 were during/right after high school. The first three were short term-ish, even though for one I worked with someone who is reasonably famous. The fourth, I was involved in from 2012 to August 2014, so the summer before college and it was by far my most significant and meaningful research experience. I spent a crazy amount of time at the lab and barely went to school, I basically worked as an inept postdoc (made plenty of mistakes and learned a lot), had a ridiculous amount of freedom considering the equipment that we were using and this experience is what made me really want to be a scientist and that I could happily spent 10 hours in the lab. I obviously am very close to this PI still and he wrote me a reference letter.
In college, despite being at a top school, the research experiences haven't been as fulfilling or fruitful for me. Maybe the first year and a half I worked in a lab that was really focused on a technique that effectively mass collected data and doing analysis. I had really minimal freedom. The project that I was working on got pretty badly delayed in the school year, and then I switched to a really technical engineering based project that moved slowly, and then for the second summer, I went back to the more biological project but basically the group I was with promised me I could do more histology et al but literally nothing came of it, so I was stuck trying to analyze data...which I sucked at. The second lab I went to does more biological work but basically I have been collecting and analyzing data for a paper that I will be on. I made one interesting finding but the PI doesn't really want to go too deep, so, eh.
Anyway, I would really like to detail my experience with the fourth lab since it was so important for me but much of the time doesn't fall within the typical window. I obviously intend on writing detailed stuff on the latter two, but will it be okay to include some stuff that happened before the summer before college? Second - can I list the earlier HS dates?
Thanks a lot!