Here’s how undergraduate students searched for and secured positions in McMaster research labs
McMaster University is known for its expansive graduate and undergraduate research and innovation opportunities. Considered Canada’s most research-intensive institution, McMaster’s thriving research labs attract students with a variety of interests and backgrounds.
Research experience allows one to develop relationships with mentors, explore career or graduate education pathways and develop confidence in lab environments among several other transferable skills. However, with the undergraduate population growing each year, available research positions can feel hard to find.
“It was very much a game of chance. Realistically, no one from my year had any previous lab experience due to COVID-19, so it more came down to who showed the most interest in what that professor was studying,” said Lynn Hussayn, a third year psychology, neuroscience and behaviour student.
Hussayn worked as a summer research student in an epilepsy research lab at the University of Toronto. Like many students, Hussayn faced difficulty finding a research position at McMaster.
“The biggest piece of advice I would give [other students] is to search for things that you enjoy and actually have questions about. Research is meant to answer questions, so the best way of being at the forefront of something you’re interested in doing is to seek out people who are already doing it,” said Hussayn.
“The biggest piece of advice I would give [other students] is to search for things that you enjoy and actually have questions about. Research is meant to answer questions, so the best way of being at the forefront of something you’re interested in doing is to seek out people who are already doing it.”
Lynn Hussayn, third-year Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour student
Jack Rosenbaum, a third year biology psychology student, also shared his own strategies for reaching out to labs from his experience as a research student in the McMaster PNB Dukas lab. He explained how he targeted his emails to graduate students from labs he was interested in instead of professors, as he thought they would be more likely to respond, which proved to be an effective strategy.
Rosenbaum also emphasized the importance of seeking out research projects that you connect with.
“If you’re really passionate about something and you show interest in a professor’s work, then I think you have a pretty good chance in working and volunteering in their lab down the road. But if you’re just doing it for your resume, I feel like professors can see through that,” said Rosenbaum.
“If you’re really passionate about something and you show interest in a professor’s work, then I think you have a pretty good chance in working and volunteering in their lab down the road. But if you’re just doing it for your resume, I feel like professors can see through that."
Jack Rosenbaum, third-year Biology Psychology student
Sarah Arnold, a third-year chemical and biomedical engineering student and the co-president of the McMaster Society for Engineering Research (Mac SER), explained how resources available through student services, such as resume and cover letter editing, are accessible and effective methods of upping your application game. Along with these services, Arnold noted Mac SER also offers helpful guidance on finding research positions.
“Throughout the year we did a bunch of different events that are aimed towards essentially helping students find [research] positions. We have different recordings on our YouTube channel of past events we’ve done where we go over in detail how we approach professors and how you can breach the idea of research,” said Arnold.
Arnold suggested using these available resources to ensure emails are formatted professionally and to make sure all documents are organized and concise. Arnold also acknowledged searching for a research position can be competitive and difficult regardless of the amount of effort you put in.
“One tip I usually give to people starting off this process is don’t be too hard on yourself. Similar to applying to competitive programs at university, or specific scholarships; it won’t always work out, and that’s okay,” said Arnold.
“One tip I usually give to people starting off this process is don’t be too hard on yourself. Similar to applying to competitive programs at university, or specific scholarships; it won’t always work out, and that’s okay.”
Sarah Arnold, Co-President of the McMaster Society for Engineering Research
Arnold emphasized the importance of recognizing the paths we are on are unique and while we should continue to seek out guidance and insight from others, every individual experience is distinctive. Finding a balance in this dichotomy is key to getting involved with research you find meaningful while also fostering independence as an undergraduate student.
Remember the feeling of getting your report card? McMaster was faced with that feeling this October, as the Globe and Mail published its annual Canadian University Report.
The assessment, released on Oct. 25, tried to get away from the largely data-based rankings of other organizations, instead assigning letter grades to different aspects of the university’s performance based on student surveys.
And McMaster’s administration was certainly pleased with the report card results.
“It’s extremely gratifying to be ranked by students as providing the highest quality teaching and learning experience in Canada,” President Patrick Deane told the Daily News, referring to McMaster’s first-place finish in its division for quality of teaching and learning.
Most notably, Mac ranked first in campus atmosphere, research opportunities and quality of teaching and learning, as well as second in student satisfaction, where it placed behind Western.
It also made an impression at the lower end of the large school division, placing second to last in city satisfaction and information technology. And naturally, McMaster’s infamous SOLAR system earned the university last place in course registration.
“If you take all the rankings, they add up to an interesting perspective that we’re strong, but there are some areas which need our attention,” said Deane.
The premise of the Globe’s rankings is a survey of current undergraduate students. For the 2013 rankings, 33,000 undergrads responded to a survey, and their responses, given on a scale of 1 to 9, were converted into corresponding letter grades. But the entire premise of this style of ranking is problematic, said Lonnie Magee, an economics professor at Mac.
“How would a university student be able to know about another school?” he asked. “It’s so driven by how you compare it with what you’re expecting.” He explained that since students attend only one university, such a comparison not particularly useful.
The Globe and Mail addressed this criticism in its 2012 Canadian University Report, released last October. Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, an education consulting firm that advises the Globe on the annual report, argued that student surveys are a reliable method of devising rankings.
“Another criticism [of the report] was that student[s] … had no idea what was available at any school other than their own. That’s true to some extent – but if year after year a particular institution gets results which are particularly good or particularly bad compared to other institutions of its type, then the results start to gain in validity,” Usher argued.
Magee notes that such results come from the “temptation to make the results more objective, to accumulate statistics and present them to show that your rankings are based on these ‘hard facts’ that have been collected.” He cautioned that qualitative factors like student satisfaction are tough to compare.
The Canadian University Report is one of two major Canadian university ranking publications. The other, administered by Maclean’s, is the more well-established of the two. It will release its 22nd annual rankings issue this year, while the Globe has just published its 11th.
Rather than following the Globe and Mail’s approach of a heavily student-based survey, Maclean’s compiles a number of factors to generate its rankings. Schools are divided into three categories: medical-doctoral, comprehensive and primarily undergraduate, in order to improve the comparison.
But the factors it uses for this comparison, made up largely of data from Statistics Canada and federal funding agencies, are sometimes criticized for not being entirely relevant to students or administration.
Mike Veall, an economics professor at McMaster, has published work on the effectiveness of the Maclean’s rankings. He described their methods as being a “little bit suspect in terms of gaining indicators.”
“It’s not quite clear that the indicators match quite well with what students or administrators should care about,” he said.
While there are many factors, the rankings do consider data like the number of library holdings and amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student.
McMaster has also been rated by broader, global organizations. But these, too, have their limitations.
The Times Higher Education (THE), for example, produces a rankings issue considered to be one of the best in the world.
This year, McMaster placed 88th overall in their report. But the THE also ranks by faculty, and in the “clinical, pre-clinical, and health” category, McMaster earned 14th place in the world, making it the top school in the category in Canada.
Meanwhile, QS, a British firm, ranked McMaster 152nd. A Shanghai-based organization Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) placed McMaster this year at 92nd.
International rankings methods provide a different set of criteria. While Maclean’s and the Globe consider student satisfaction, such firms as QS and THE factor in a school’s industry influence and international impact – an area where McMaster can’t compete as well, especially when factors like number of Nobel Prize winners are considered.
But in the end, a bad report card doesn’t have a huge effect on a school, Veall said. In his 2005 study, co-authored by Qi Kong, a Mac undergrad at the time, he concluded that a change in ranking has little effect on a school’s enrolment share or the entrance average of its students. A shift of one place in the rankings can, at best, change the mean entrance average by 0.3 percent, although Veall emphasized that this conclusion was “not particularly robust.”
But even though the rankings may not matter much in the end, it doesn’t mean McMaster can’t be happy with a good report card.
