Improving Your Research Application

If you want to get into a research lab, you need to impress the professor and/or PhD student(s) reviewing your application, especially if you’re applying for a competitive position. While some factors in your application, such as your GPA, are important in both industry and academic applications, there are many differences in things that the application reader looks for between industry and academia. Professors and graduate students are looking for evidence of strong research potential and signs of motivation and drive when looking undergraduate researchers to join their lab. Therefore, you can’t simply reuse your work applications to apply for research roles. Keep reading to find out what professors and graduate students look for in undergraduate researchers, and how to emphasize things that will improve your chances of impressing them and getting into the lab.

What professors and PhD students look for in undergraduate research applications

When recruiting undergraduate researchers, professors and PhD students look for strong potential to do good research and signs of long-term commitment. This is because it’s a very big investment to hire and train new researchers, so research mentors would rather do it if they knew their mentee was strong and committed to working together for a long enough period of time (e.g., at least 1 year).

Here are some things that can indicate strong potential to do good research:

Relevant research experience that led to publications at top conferences or journals.
Relevant research experience that led to workshop publications.
Relevant research-oriented course projects that led to novel findings.
Excellence in coursework that is related to the field of research.
Honors and awards in coursework or programs that are related to the field of research.
Teaching assistantships in courses that are related to the field of research.
High academic standing (i.e., high GPA).
Substantial research-oriented side projects.

Here are signs that a student is committed to doing long-term research:

Has a good reason for wanting to do research.
Has plans to stay in the lab for at least a year.
Has plans to apply to PhD programs or research-oriented master’s programs.
Is genuinely excited about the field of research.
Has completed projects related to the field of research, demonstrating passion.
Has read a lot of research papers in the research area.

Other factors may also help in your application to research positions:

Evidence of grit. Researchers need to resilient since they often experience many failures and rejections, and the path of academia is long and strenuous.
Diversity. Some professors really care about having a diverse group of students. Therefore, if you have a unique background (which you probably do as an undocumented immigrant), you may want to consider sharing about it. However, I would advise against immediately mentioning that you are an undocumented immigrant, since doing so may burden the listener. It may be more effective to highlight different things that make your background unique.
Exceptional success in some passion. Sometimes, if you have accomplished something spectacular outside of research and maybe even academics as a whole, such as winning a national science or math competition or competing internationally, this is enough to get the professor’s attention.

Improving your research application

Depending on your own personal circumstances, you can start by trying to satisfy some of the bullet points mentioned above to bolster your application to research labs. This will take time, and some of the options may be too far out of reach. Try your best to do well in the few things that you focus on, and build up from there.

Eventually, when you apply to research positions, you should treat it like a job application in the sense that you need to impress the reader (often the professor or PhD student) in a short amount of time. Therefore, some of the tips I wrote on the other pages about securing internships apply here as well. For example, be concise with your emails, and highlight the most important aspects about you that might intrigue the reader. Have a good attitude and be friendly. Try to sell yourself while staying genuine.

Lastly, sometimes it’s just a matter of knocking on the door multiple times before you are finally able to get an offer to join a lab. Sometimes professors are very busy for one semester/quarter and never reply to your email, but you might hear back if you try again another quarter, especially with an improved application with more content highlighting your ability to do good research. If they see your name multiple times in their inbox across a long span of time, they might recognize your name and start to think that you’re seriously invested in their line of research. They might even feel bad for having ignored so many of your emails, and they might finally respond. Note: This does not mean annoy the PI with a bunch of emails; always be polite and respectful.

Hopefully you are able to get into the research lab of your dreams! Best of luck!