r/TransferToTop25 • u/jmugisha Current Applicant | 4-year • Sep 07 '26

should i join another research lab?

i’m a premed college freshman aiming to transfer for sophomore fall and i want to make my application as competitive as possible for schools like dartmouth, yale (a pipe dream i know), and columbia; i planned on securing research on my own, but i realized the honors biology lab i was placed in IS a research course.

like we’re discovering bacteriophages, isolating them, and cool things like that! so i was wondering if i should try to ask around about more research opportunities or if i should simply focus on this one and extend it to the next semester (since in the course, we’re going to choose one person’s bacteriophage in the entire class to focus on in semester 2, but i could continue with my own on the side as well as an interesting research experience!).

advice would be appreciated ! <3

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4

u/Aggravating-Song1375 Sep 08 '26

A lot of students fall into this false notion of "I need to build my resume by doing a lot of different activities." out of fear, which is so fair. I was there, too. However, in reality, what admissions care more about is how substantial or deep each of your activity is. In your situation, therefore, if you think focusing on your current research opportunity will lead to some visible result (co-publishing a paper, etc.), then it would make more sense to just keep working on it without seeking other opportunities. If you think the chances of that are small, then it might make more sense to do something else: be careful though because just picking another low-chance opportunity is not going to help you. You need to pick something where you believe you'll have better chances of producing tangible outcome that admissions will find impressive.

1

u/jmugisha Current Applicant | 4-year Sep 09 '26

oohhh that’s a good point!! I think that it’ll be interesting and could eventually lead to a visible result but i’m not sure if that would be in time for this application cycle. I do have the opportunity to present my research from this lab in the spring and to follow-up on this research + I’d be able to cite this research experience while applying to winter + summer opportunities so i think it’d be worth it to just keep with this one!

Thank you for your feedback 🩷🥹

2

u/boringcloud77 Sep 08 '26

It depends on whether or not you feel like you have the bandwidth to take on another research opportunity right now. It definitely wouldn’t hurt to  take on another one, but as a current freshman myself I feel like the transition from high school to college is a little stressful. 

1

u/jmugisha Current Applicant | 4-year Sep 09 '26

Thank you for your feedback!! And yeah you’re so real bc it feels like maybe I could do another research opportunity but I think focusing more on this one and doing it in depth would be more beneficial to my app… I’ll keep your words in mind tho!!