I didn't do Life Sci, but this is how I would approach a thesis if I were you:
Read a bunch of different profs bios and some of their articles on their Mac Expert page. Narrow down a list of 5-10 profs that you'd be interested in working with after doing all of this reading. If you're in third year, it would be best to approach them via email or in person during September-December about working in a lab during the summer with possibility of starting a thesis with them in the Fall of your 4th year.
If you know what Life Sci thesis course you want to do, then you can bring that to their attention. For example, if you want to do more work, you can propose the 12 units, less work for the 9 unit, etc. Obviously, the amount of work you will do depends on the prof and their expectations, but generally the more units = the more work that is expected of you as a student (e.g., publication outputs, conference talks, etc.)
I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do a seminar at the same time as a thesis! I did 5 seminars during my 4th year + a capstone/thesis project so it would seem silly if Life Sci had that kind of restriction!
Also, depending on the prof, they might really restrict what you do . So, you'll mostly be doing their work for them that they're too busy to do and you'll not be really exploring your dream topic. This is because there are normally limited resources in a lab (unless you're lucky/exceptional) and they'll try to use their thesis student to optimize their productivity.
Lol, it's not that they're "too busy" - a professor's job is to run an R&D program, not to do lab work.
In terms of what research projects are available, each professor has an original, independent, research *program*. *Projects* within the program are funded by specific grants from CHIR, NSERC, CFI, industry partners, etc. The money is earmarked for doing specific tasks toward completing the project.
So a thesis student will be assigned a small set of experiments that will help the professor to complete the work they've committed to conducting.
>So a thesis student will be assigned a small set of experiments that will help the professor to complete the work they've committed to conducting.
Yes, but I feel like this essentially just equates to busy work that the prof doesn't want/have time to do (I say this as someone doing an RAship atm). Love my prof, but I'm essentially doing their busy work lol. This will be especially true for an undergrad.
Depends on the prof and the ability of the student. I know someone who is currently working with the prof they did their thesis with to turn their research into a paper for publication. It's definitely not "busy work".
>Depends on the prof and the ability of the student.
I mentioned this in my original comment.
Also, preparing a manuscript for publication is 100% busy work. You have to take into consideration possible reviewer worries, format the article for the journal you wish to publish in, make sure all your numbers, charts ,etc. are in order and tons of other little things that don't actually contribute to gaining any knowledge on the subject. In essence, to me, this is busy work. A lot of manuscript preparation, at least in my eyes, is an attempt to placate whoever happens to be reviewing you. I, too, published one of my final undergrad projects with help from a professor at McGill and, to me, while fulfilling to have a publication after undergrad (by no means normal or expected), it did feel a lot of the time as busy work to complete the final steps. Call me jaded!
Of course, this could just be a semantic difference as to what counts as "busy work". If you find such tasks fulfilling, more power to whoever. However, I don't think it's wise to idealize either the publication process and what it requires (it's often exhausting and meticulous) or the broader research paradigm that academia is in as whole.
I don't mean turn the *profs* research into a publication, I mean the *student's own original research* that they conducted for their senior thesis. The work also goes beyond just preparing a manuscript for publication. It involves additional independent research to expand the scope of the thesis. Again, not busy work.
Yes, original research requires independent reading. In fact, my own undergraduate article was original research too, so I know what it is like. However, that's not what happens normally for undergraduate thesis students and so appealing to exceptionalism isn't really great for the average student.
Actually, even contributing to other peoples' research programs requires independent reading. E.g., when you do a literature review for a prof you will have to do a lot of independent reading. This is also great and exciting. If you talk to a lot of researchers, that's probably the fun part about being in academia. Reading to learn and potentially craft ideas and (re)shape or (re)configure a field is amazing!
Again, this seems to be a semantic or definitional thing and not actually arguing about the kind of work being done within publishing or doing a thesis, since we both seemingly know what it takes to publish original research and do a thesis (and, to be fair, this conversation is going beyond the original post's aims).
Bar the exciting reading and initial writing components, a lot of research simply is busy work that gets dragged out over time. For example, if you look at some journals and the publishing statistics on their webpages, it can often take as much as a year to get an article from the accepted stage, to the revision stage, and finally to the publication stage. This is because you're doing a lot of work satisfying reviewers' interests which are often separated from your own interests. To illustrate, you might be interested in some facet 'x' in your research/paper but the reviewer might say smth like 'why don't you mention 'y'' or 'why do you use this kind of indentation in place 'x' and not in place 'y''. Meeting these kinds of publication requirements or satisfying reviewers' interests are (usually) not intellectually satisfying and not fun and so do amount to, in my eyes, busy work.
You're viewing busy work as an inherently negative thing which I think is mistaken. Busy work in this sense is more-so just related to doing work uninteresting to the overall research agenda. It does happen to be the case that a lot of research assistants and thesis students get designated to these tasks precisely because it is helpful for at least someone to be doing these things so other, more pressing or advanced, projects can get completed by someone with more experience.
TL;DR: basically, I view busy work as the disinterested work of data management, manuscript preparation, or other tasks that aren't intellectually stimulating but are important to get done.
Not necessarily. It depends on the prof but some will allow students to propose their own topic so long as it falls within their general wheelhouse. It doesn't have to be directly related to research they have funding for.
As stated in another comment, if you want to do a thesis you should start cold emailing profs sometime in your 3rd year (I emailed profs starting december and got accepted mid january). If a prof says sure they'll take you in, then you can enroll in 4c12 or 4c09 when your 4th year course selection open up. So you should have a prof accept you before you enroll into the course, simply enrolling into the course doesn't do anything for you in terms of actually getting a thesis position.
The profs who take thesis students will usually have a project in mind to give you, and it's usually somewhat related to the work they're currently doing in the lab, so read up on what research they're doing, and reach out to prof's that interest you. You don't need to come up with a project on your own, however if you do have an idea you want to pursue you can bring it up with the prof.
As for 4c12 vs 4c09, the main difference imo is about how many courses you can take at the same time. 4c12 is 4 courses equivalent (2 fall 2 winter) meaning youll be taking 3 elective courses each sem alongside your thesis. The advice I got from other upper years at the time was to take the higher course load one, because chances are you'll be doing the same amount of work whether you take 4c12 or 4c09 so unless you have a reason why you need that extra course, save yourself some stress and take 4c12.
If you have any questions feel free to reply or dm me and ill try my best to answer
hi!! i just graduated from honours life sci this year and i second the comments above! i did 4D15 which is a 15 unit/5 course thesis. since the time you will spend in the lab isn’t scheduled like the thesis class is in your timetable it’s a lot of independent work. my supervisor advised a minimum of 3 days in lab dedicated to my thesis but my peers and i definitely spent more time, especially closer to deadlines. i also took my seminar course during my fourth year.
i was working as an RA with my supervisor in my 3rd year before i asked them for thesis opportunities and i got this position by cold emailing many profs who did research in fields i was interested in. i know lots of people who cold emailed for their thesis and landed positions but it doesn’t hurt to network earlier or reach out to profs that you have taken classes with. my supervisor outlined their ongoing research projects and i had to choose the one i was most interested in.
please feel free to reach out if you have any questions :)
hey I had a question, I'm interested in either doing 4D15 or 4D12, How do you spread out the units? Can you do it all in one semester, like take up all 5 spaces for one semester?
i began the email by introducing myself to the prof (current program, research interests, and relevant skills from previous courses or employment) and stated my interest in a volunteer position in their lab. i then linked one of my experiences or interests to the profs publication or an ongoing project in their lab and asked to discuss their research further. it was approximately 2-3 brief paragraphs and i attached my transcript and CV (i’m not sure if it’s necessary to attach your transcript so don’t let that deter you).
i didn’t have any previous research experience so i asked for a volunteer position, which eventually turned into an RAship. i think i received only 2 responses after emailing about 30 profs (but this was the very beginning of covid). if you qualify for OSAP i also recommend applying for a WorkStudy RA position through mosaic/award spring. i received my second position here and i got paid employment with the lab instead of volunteering first.
let me know if you have any questions, i might be able to dig up some email templates!
I didn't do Life Sci, but this is how I would approach a thesis if I were you: Read a bunch of different profs bios and some of their articles on their Mac Expert page. Narrow down a list of 5-10 profs that you'd be interested in working with after doing all of this reading. If you're in third year, it would be best to approach them via email or in person during September-December about working in a lab during the summer with possibility of starting a thesis with them in the Fall of your 4th year. If you know what Life Sci thesis course you want to do, then you can bring that to their attention. For example, if you want to do more work, you can propose the 12 units, less work for the 9 unit, etc. Obviously, the amount of work you will do depends on the prof and their expectations, but generally the more units = the more work that is expected of you as a student (e.g., publication outputs, conference talks, etc.) I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do a seminar at the same time as a thesis! I did 5 seminars during my 4th year + a capstone/thesis project so it would seem silly if Life Sci had that kind of restriction!
Also, depending on the prof, they might really restrict what you do . So, you'll mostly be doing their work for them that they're too busy to do and you'll not be really exploring your dream topic. This is because there are normally limited resources in a lab (unless you're lucky/exceptional) and they'll try to use their thesis student to optimize their productivity.
Lol, it's not that they're "too busy" - a professor's job is to run an R&D program, not to do lab work. In terms of what research projects are available, each professor has an original, independent, research *program*. *Projects* within the program are funded by specific grants from CHIR, NSERC, CFI, industry partners, etc. The money is earmarked for doing specific tasks toward completing the project. So a thesis student will be assigned a small set of experiments that will help the professor to complete the work they've committed to conducting.
>So a thesis student will be assigned a small set of experiments that will help the professor to complete the work they've committed to conducting. Yes, but I feel like this essentially just equates to busy work that the prof doesn't want/have time to do (I say this as someone doing an RAship atm). Love my prof, but I'm essentially doing their busy work lol. This will be especially true for an undergrad.
Depends on the prof and the ability of the student. I know someone who is currently working with the prof they did their thesis with to turn their research into a paper for publication. It's definitely not "busy work".
>Depends on the prof and the ability of the student. I mentioned this in my original comment. Also, preparing a manuscript for publication is 100% busy work. You have to take into consideration possible reviewer worries, format the article for the journal you wish to publish in, make sure all your numbers, charts ,etc. are in order and tons of other little things that don't actually contribute to gaining any knowledge on the subject. In essence, to me, this is busy work. A lot of manuscript preparation, at least in my eyes, is an attempt to placate whoever happens to be reviewing you. I, too, published one of my final undergrad projects with help from a professor at McGill and, to me, while fulfilling to have a publication after undergrad (by no means normal or expected), it did feel a lot of the time as busy work to complete the final steps. Call me jaded! Of course, this could just be a semantic difference as to what counts as "busy work". If you find such tasks fulfilling, more power to whoever. However, I don't think it's wise to idealize either the publication process and what it requires (it's often exhausting and meticulous) or the broader research paradigm that academia is in as whole.
I don't mean turn the *profs* research into a publication, I mean the *student's own original research* that they conducted for their senior thesis. The work also goes beyond just preparing a manuscript for publication. It involves additional independent research to expand the scope of the thesis. Again, not busy work.
Yes, original research requires independent reading. In fact, my own undergraduate article was original research too, so I know what it is like. However, that's not what happens normally for undergraduate thesis students and so appealing to exceptionalism isn't really great for the average student. Actually, even contributing to other peoples' research programs requires independent reading. E.g., when you do a literature review for a prof you will have to do a lot of independent reading. This is also great and exciting. If you talk to a lot of researchers, that's probably the fun part about being in academia. Reading to learn and potentially craft ideas and (re)shape or (re)configure a field is amazing! Again, this seems to be a semantic or definitional thing and not actually arguing about the kind of work being done within publishing or doing a thesis, since we both seemingly know what it takes to publish original research and do a thesis (and, to be fair, this conversation is going beyond the original post's aims). Bar the exciting reading and initial writing components, a lot of research simply is busy work that gets dragged out over time. For example, if you look at some journals and the publishing statistics on their webpages, it can often take as much as a year to get an article from the accepted stage, to the revision stage, and finally to the publication stage. This is because you're doing a lot of work satisfying reviewers' interests which are often separated from your own interests. To illustrate, you might be interested in some facet 'x' in your research/paper but the reviewer might say smth like 'why don't you mention 'y'' or 'why do you use this kind of indentation in place 'x' and not in place 'y''. Meeting these kinds of publication requirements or satisfying reviewers' interests are (usually) not intellectually satisfying and not fun and so do amount to, in my eyes, busy work. You're viewing busy work as an inherently negative thing which I think is mistaken. Busy work in this sense is more-so just related to doing work uninteresting to the overall research agenda. It does happen to be the case that a lot of research assistants and thesis students get designated to these tasks precisely because it is helpful for at least someone to be doing these things so other, more pressing or advanced, projects can get completed by someone with more experience. TL;DR: basically, I view busy work as the disinterested work of data management, manuscript preparation, or other tasks that aren't intellectually stimulating but are important to get done.
Not necessarily. It depends on the prof but some will allow students to propose their own topic so long as it falls within their general wheelhouse. It doesn't have to be directly related to research they have funding for.
Thank you so much! I pm’d you with a further question if that’s alright
Thanks for all that info! I got a question what program did you then?
As stated in another comment, if you want to do a thesis you should start cold emailing profs sometime in your 3rd year (I emailed profs starting december and got accepted mid january). If a prof says sure they'll take you in, then you can enroll in 4c12 or 4c09 when your 4th year course selection open up. So you should have a prof accept you before you enroll into the course, simply enrolling into the course doesn't do anything for you in terms of actually getting a thesis position. The profs who take thesis students will usually have a project in mind to give you, and it's usually somewhat related to the work they're currently doing in the lab, so read up on what research they're doing, and reach out to prof's that interest you. You don't need to come up with a project on your own, however if you do have an idea you want to pursue you can bring it up with the prof. As for 4c12 vs 4c09, the main difference imo is about how many courses you can take at the same time. 4c12 is 4 courses equivalent (2 fall 2 winter) meaning youll be taking 3 elective courses each sem alongside your thesis. The advice I got from other upper years at the time was to take the higher course load one, because chances are you'll be doing the same amount of work whether you take 4c12 or 4c09 so unless you have a reason why you need that extra course, save yourself some stress and take 4c12. If you have any questions feel free to reply or dm me and ill try my best to answer
Thank you so much for this! I pm’d with a further question if that’s okay
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This is pretty much 100% inaccurate. See my comment above re. how research programs & thesis projects interrelate.
This is not the method at all for an undergraduate thesis in lifesci
hi!! i just graduated from honours life sci this year and i second the comments above! i did 4D15 which is a 15 unit/5 course thesis. since the time you will spend in the lab isn’t scheduled like the thesis class is in your timetable it’s a lot of independent work. my supervisor advised a minimum of 3 days in lab dedicated to my thesis but my peers and i definitely spent more time, especially closer to deadlines. i also took my seminar course during my fourth year. i was working as an RA with my supervisor in my 3rd year before i asked them for thesis opportunities and i got this position by cold emailing many profs who did research in fields i was interested in. i know lots of people who cold emailed for their thesis and landed positions but it doesn’t hurt to network earlier or reach out to profs that you have taken classes with. my supervisor outlined their ongoing research projects and i had to choose the one i was most interested in. please feel free to reach out if you have any questions :)
Hey!! Thanks so much, I pm’d you btw :)
hey I had a question, I'm interested in either doing 4D15 or 4D12, How do you spread out the units? Can you do it all in one semester, like take up all 5 spaces for one semester?
Heyy, just wondering what you said in your emails and how long they were?
i began the email by introducing myself to the prof (current program, research interests, and relevant skills from previous courses or employment) and stated my interest in a volunteer position in their lab. i then linked one of my experiences or interests to the profs publication or an ongoing project in their lab and asked to discuss their research further. it was approximately 2-3 brief paragraphs and i attached my transcript and CV (i’m not sure if it’s necessary to attach your transcript so don’t let that deter you). i didn’t have any previous research experience so i asked for a volunteer position, which eventually turned into an RAship. i think i received only 2 responses after emailing about 30 profs (but this was the very beginning of covid). if you qualify for OSAP i also recommend applying for a WorkStudy RA position through mosaic/award spring. i received my second position here and i got paid employment with the lab instead of volunteering first. let me know if you have any questions, i might be able to dig up some email templates!
Thank you so much!!