Should I apply for the Goldwater Scholarship?

Aurora132231
Thu, 04 Sep 2014 05:25:20 +0000

My university is opening up a pre-application for the Goldwater Scholarship, where anyone can apply and they’ll pick their 4 nominees from that pool of applicants. I was wondering if I should try applying for it, but I don’t know if I’m qualified enough to try because it’s a really big deal.

Some information about me:

-I’m a sophomore this year
-Biochemistry major
-I have a 3.97 GPA (only ever gotten 1 A- and no B’s)
-I go to a state university
-I’m in a few extracurricular activities and have a leadership position in one of them
-I work as a biology tutor for my school
-I shadowed researchers at a hospital the summer before last, but have never gotten a real internship
-My career goals are either to do biomedical research at a university, or clinical research for a hospital or private company
-I am currently involved in undergraduate research in a cancer research lab. I’ve been doing it since my freshman year, but last year I mostly just helped out with random tasks around the lab. (Making solutions, setting up basic reactions, transferring cells to new culture dishes, etc.) This year, I am helping my advisor with one of her specific projects. She came up with the idea for the project and created an experimental plan, but I’m in charge of actually collecting data for the experiment and I will help her analyze it later on.

I want to send in a pre-application for this prestigious scholarship but I’m afraid I’ll just be in over my head. As a sophomore, would I be considered too young/inexperienced to get the award? Also, is it bad that I haven’t really done any independent research yet? Even though I am helping with a project now, I still can’t really call it my own work because my advisor thought of the whole thing and basically just told me what to do.

What do you guys think?