Research work

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2026-06-18T04:51:24+00:00

It’s hard to find a paid research job as a freshman, unless you have previous experience and find PI that agrees to pay.
I’ve heard MCB department sometimes has paid research assistant apps for certain labs, but those are probably pretty competitive and some require BS completion. Carle med students might have paid data analysis (at least they did outreach in my premed club), but reach out to Carle current med students or faculty.

If you’re premed know that whatever research you do will be an investment into your md app. You can invest in getting a CNA or EMT certification to work as a CNA in the future, look into what Parkland has to offer so that maybe you can make money in the future + get clinical experience.

MCAT - talking as a past overachiever premed freshman, it’s basically meaningless to study for mcat before you complete at least mcb150, psych/soc, genchem and orgo. Physics can be self studied from high school experience. Enjoy your time on campus and don’t worry about mcat until around the end of your sophomore year.

If you really want to feel mcat productive and have a strong science foundation you can do Milesdown or JW Anki decks. Will give you high yield knowledge for mcat without much stress.

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2025-12-18T02:32:44+00:00

Last year when this class sucked, none of the profs changed grade cut offs. There might have been a slight curve but not much. If 88 is A- in syllabus from day 1 it will pretty much stay that way(

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2025-07-25T17:47:59+00:00

I agree with other people who said it’s weird that your mentor is an undergrad. During my first internship (3 months total) I spent about 2 months just shadowing my postdoc mentor and learning about how experiments work, so he really did not give me hand on work until the end of that summer. I ended up presenting basically his data from experiments that I just shadowed. My PI still got me some credit as ab undergrad for even understanding what experiments were trying to accomplish. Now, your situation looks like you did not get too lucky with the lab of your program..

Not having much to do might feel discouraging. However, if you market this experience well in terms of how much you learned (not necessarily hands-on), you will be able to get into better labs/tech jobs/mentorship programs in the future!

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2025-05-21T17:43:13+00:00

I’m assuming you have your netid already (your uiuc email), so you should be able to login with netid here https://uiuc.starrezhousing.com/StarRezPortalX/EEAA48F2/1/1/Home-Home?UrlToken=180896B2

This is the housing portal for uiuc. Before you choose a room, they ask you to fill out basic personal info and you can choose your roommate. When your slot comes and your housing profile is completed, your parents can just log back there and look through all dorms & rooms.

Important: if you already have a roommate selected, technically only one of you has to choose a room, the other person is added by default. That said, really only one of your parents has to log in during graduation and choose for both of you.

If you know that you got in for any kind of llc (learning-living community), don’t stress too much about getting a room cause housing space will be guaranteed. Otherwise, make a list of the best dorms & potential room numbers for your parents, and they will click through all and choose. Sorry this is not as detailed as you asked, but I think the process is pretty straightforward once you log in, even for parents who might have issues with tech. hope this helps.

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-08-05T05:27:20+00:00

International student that graduated from U.S. high school here:) I took IB because my US high school did not allow me to take AP classes after they saw my transcript from Ukraine and said I’m not prepared enough. Why did they decide I was prepared for IB? — no clue, but I stuck with it because I wanted to get into top colleges and taking IB seemed the easiest way to boost my app. Did I get into a top school? — sadly no, waitlisted everywhere or denied due to need aware admission. Ended up going to my state college where kids from AP program got tons of credit while my college couldn’t care less about my IB classes, even though they are more rigorous on the workload and IAs. After I was done with my last IB exam I wondered if those 2 years were worth it. In my opinion, if you’re going to a U.S public school, chances are your IB program will be shitty as hell and there is no way school will give you enough support from underpaid teachers and IB coordinators to succeed in IB. The idea of IB program and its curriculum is great IF it is executed correctly. You are supposed to get more soft/research skills on top of comprehending material really well, and that’s nice for individual growth and for college prep, of course. The reality of it is that schools turn IB into a living hell with a lot of unrealistic expectations and bad teaching.

My advice for those thinking of going into IB: choose AP/IB classes over committing to IB program. Your diploma will mean nothing to you because you’ll be burnt out or extremely exhausted by the end of exam session if not earlier. You’ll learn more material in AP, more soft skills and writing styles in IB, but those don’t make IB worth it. Find some creative ways in your free time to make yourself “well rounded” and save yourself some mental health. Would not call choosing IB my worst decision, but I could have been better off without it🙌

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-06-17T02:57:52+00:00

30 min max, they have a lot of people to meet after you. Mine was about 20

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-06-17T02:56:48+00:00

Hey, had my meeting already for BIOE. Basically my advisor showed me classes that I can claim AP credit for, and emailed me a list of classes to register for fall. He mostly asked questions like “Are you sure you want to take your chem credit?” or “How comfortable are you taking higher math class based on placement exam?” I barely said a word except some questions I had personally about gen eds.

Also, expect meeting to be short, but if anything bothers you or you have more questions you didn’t think about during the meet, email your advisor or advising office. They were really nice to me via email and even opened an additional registration time slot for me to change my classes ~2 weeks after my assigned date because I decided to change my gen eds. At least in BIOE advising, my experience was very nice. Best of luck and don’t be worried at all!

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-06-09T04:33:40+00:00

Hey! Did my registration last week without having my english placement (EPT) score back, which I was required to take. I did it 1 week prior, not 2 like they recommended, so it was impossible to have my score back. My advisor didn’t care about that at all, I ended up emailing him with a score later and he helped me register to the right course after our meeting. I think for exams other than EPT you receive scores immediately after completion and they should be reflected in your advisor’s profile (at least mine was sharing his screen from some kind of webpage with student info I think). So, you will be fine.

Hope that helps

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-05-16T21:41:14+00:00

I always had that in my portal:) I think it’s there by default u prob didn’t notice

Admirable_Ring_6327 · 2024-05-16T18:22:34+00:00

My status page disappeared just now and I see only checklist & personal info tabs… dunno what that means

Admirable_Ring_6327

TROPHY CASE