Admissions UG research in "unrelated" field

[mcabbage]

I'm doing a USRA (Canadian equivalent of an NSF URA etc, fairly competitive) in the applied math department of my school, where i'll be working on mathematical/computational systems biology. I'll be learning lots of techniques for simulations, dynamical systems, etc and one of their models is based off of a model used in the study of liquid crystals. I want to keep my options open in case I decide to go into mathematical biotech/nanotech research which is why this USRA was attractive to me (in addition to the fact that this summer the physics USRAs were more competitive and all the interesting potential advisors are swamped with grad students)

I'm worried that grad schools won't value my USRA as much as if I did it in say, comp astrophysics or something. What does everyone think?

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I'm doing a USRA (Canadian equivalent of an NSF URA etc, fairly competitive) in the applied math department of my school, where i'll be working on mathematical/computational systems biology. I'll be learning lots of techniques for simulations, dynamical systems, etc and one of their models is based off of a model used in the study of liquid crystals. I want to keep my options open in case I decide to go into mathematical biotech/nanotech research which is why this USRA was attractive to me (in addition to the fact that this summer the physics USRAs were more competitive and all the interesting potential advisors are swamped with grad students)

I'm worried that grad schools won't value my USRA as much as if I did it in say, comp astrophysics or something. What does everyone think?

If your work yields a publication and great recommendation letters, I think you'll be fine.

All factors being equal, it is better to have undergraduate research more closely related to the field of graduate study.

But all factors are seldom equal. Work in a different field yielding a publication and great recommendation trumps work in the same field yielding no publication and a luke warm recommendation.

Supply and demand is a real thing. Rock the opportunity before you and don't worry about it.

 

[Choppy]

I agree with Dr. Courtney. There's a lot of value in exploring your options as an undergraduate. You likely won't have as much freedom to explore the further on you go.