<p>One more thing: when I was there, NU granted 1 credit to independent research. Some people would think since it’s 1 credit, it’s a fair game to put in the “fair” number of hours, which I believe is something like 9 or 12 hours a week. But anyone who budgets time for reserach based on 1 credit probably won’t produce or gain anything meaningful. If you are someone like postdoc with lots of coursework under your belt, you may produce some quality work in that time-frame. For undergrads and depending on the project, there could be a steep learning curve; in such case, the background reading alone can take a lot of time.</p>