UROP first semester freshman year

faraday
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:43:32 +0000

I also had a UROP first semester freshman year, and I have some advices I’d like to share.


Don’t just do a UROP first semester out of hastiness. Choose your UROP group carefully, and make sure it’s a topic you care about and would like to spend at least 10hrs/week working on.
As a freshman, I don’t think making a major breakthrough is a priority. Instead, I think you should select your UROP keeping in mind of the skills you want to acquire through your UROP. I, for one, wished I was more involved with coding/computation in my UROP, and wished I got to use more tools like Matlab, finite element analysis, some linear algebra tools often used in data analysis, in my 1st UROP. Those software skills will always come in handy for your later UROP’s and even for some classes.
The hardest thing about UROP I think is time management. A lot of time, you will be on your own, with very little monitoring. This means it is very easy to work 2-3 weeks with very little results. It’s very different from having weekly psets from a class, where you HAVE to get things done under a deadline. Therefore, I think you should set a schedule to yourself, with a list of objectives every week you should meet. It’s going to make your UROP much more productive. I wish I knew about that when I did my UROP.
If you keep those things in mind, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get involved in a UROP 1st semester.