What are the expectations for undergraduates in research?

sschoe2
Tue, 10 Dec 2013 09:15:56 +0000

As an undergrad your research should probably be heavily supervised and it should either be relatively simple or heavily laid out for you. Independent thought is built more as you get later into a graduate program as the first year of grad school is often courses and you should spend the rest of your time getting mentored heavily by someone, either the PI, a post-doc, or a senior grad student.

I wouldn’t expect to be doing semiautonomous research untill year 2 or so of grad school. Right now yea you should probably be doing grunt work but you might also well be served by shadowing someone and learning from them and how they are doing their project.