By Jeffrey Shu (OURS Peer Advisor)

“What are you doing when you graduate?” “What do you want to do 10 years from now?” As a senior about to graduate, these are big questions that I have grappled with daily.
I started off my college career thinking of medical school, then a research path, then pharmacy training, and finally research again (with pastry chef thrown into that mix a couple times as well). With multiple ideas tugging at me and looming deadlines, I decided some “gap years” were the way to go.

By Hannah Thorner

Having participated in this URAP program since my first semester at Berkeley, it is strange to think of a time when research was not part of my life. I first learned about the URAP program through an online course I took the summer before my freshman year called L&S 1. The course introduced the departments in L&S to give an overview of majors, each discussed by a professor. I was already set on majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology, but was open to learning what other options were out there.

By Hannah Thorner and Jenisha Sabaratnam
There are many research opportunities for undergraduates available at UC Berkeley, so sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start. One way to narrow down your options is to think about the location you seek to be doing research work. When people first think of research, they tend to picture an academic research laboratory. However, museums are also major locations of research work on our campus.

A group of undergraduate peer advisors from the Office of Undergraduate Research & Scholarships created this short 2017 holiday video as a way of expressing their appreciation for how UC Berkeley supports undergraduate learning. As you'll see, the recurring themes are: inclusion in community, gratitude for how their initiatives have been financially and intellectually supported, and appreciation for world-class mentorship.

If you are interested in exploring the different scholarship programs that are available, log onto the Scholarship Connection website which is managed by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships (OURS) Prestigious Scholarships Office. These competitive awards may be local, national, or international in scope and may vary in eligibility and major requirements.

With a handful of exceptions (such as the Polymaths Project) mathematics research can often be a solitary endeavor. Take, for example, Yitang Zhang’s lonely path to a major breakthrough in pure math. Why is math research historically an individual enterprise? Are mathematicians generally introverts? Do mathematicians struggle to communicate with one another? Are they smelly?

The semester is officially in full swing, and even though classes are holding their first midterms and URAP is officially closed for this semester…you may still be looking for a lab based research position. Cold emails, or introductory emails to professors you’ve never met, are one route to getting a research position. While they are not as ideal as a situation where you have already come to know a professor, they do sometimes open the door to great experiences. Here’s some tips on how to write such an email...

As an undergraduate research peer advisor, I recently had an opportunity to interview four undergraduate researchers at Cal who major in linguistics and carried out senior thesis research, often with support from programs like the SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) and LRAP (Linguistics Research Apprenticeship Practicum) and URAP (Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program). We talked about their motivations for starting research, the challenges that they have faced, and their future plans growing out of the projects. One thing that all of these students had was their tremendous passion for their research and, in general, the incredible diversity and complexity of languages. Here are some highlights from my interviews. I hope you enjoy getting to know these inspiring students!

Each spring, the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaurete Prize awards a small number of graduating seniors the extraordinary opportunity to put their ideas and their ideals into action. Granted awards of up to $25,000, recipients of the Prize dedicate themselves to going out into the world to work on socially engaged projects of their own design in the year following graduation. This month, UC Berkeley celebrates the tenth anniversary of the prestigious student Prize.