My Advice for Summer Research Placement Applications
Summer research experiences for undergraduates have been common in the US for years, and more recently have been growing in availability in the UK (where they are sometimes called "summer research placements"). They are one of the best ways to help obtain a PhD position where demonstrating your experience and ability in the research environment really helps. As an undergraduate at Oxford I benefited from summer placements in two summer breaks. I spent the summer between my first and second years working at the Davis Planetarium at the Maryland Science Center (as part of the British University's North America Club, BUNAC exchange scheme), and in the summer between my second and third year I spent 10 weeks working with Duncan Forbes, then an academic at Birmingham University (which happens to be relatively close to where I grew up), on a project which resulted in my first ever published paper: " The elliptical galaxy formerly known as the Local Group: merging the glo...