soph summer stuck in DEADEND research

it will help definitely. just play up what the actual research is instead of the mundane aspects. definitely spin it so it sounds like you built up tranferrable skills, like teamwork, attention to detail etc.. not that hard.

it will help set you apart from the PWM people and those that didn't get any kind of job.

have you tried asking him questions or asking him to give you work?? it could be a great contact if you know how to network...

I'd ask the guy for some real work. Since he has you around anyway, hopefully he'll be willing to have you help out on an actual project. Frankly I'm surprised they have you doing that kind of work; there are usually office assistants for this kind of thing.

I'll also add that not all research positions are this bad. During my soph. summer, I worked for a finance prof on a paper that was published in a top journal. I was able to talk intelligently about the topic during interviews, and this was definitely a plus (not having done the same PWM garbage everyone else did).

Rickets, what exactly did you do for your prof? I'm going to ask him for some real work but I really dont know what I can even help him with. I mean assuming this is cutting edge research, what exactly can 2nd year undergrads do other than writing up summaries?

When you guys did your research stint, how many hours a week did you work? Was it more like just get an assignment and do it at your own free time and discuss with prof once a week or is it show up at his office at a desk 40 hours a week and play solitare?

of course this is valuable - so much of banking involves fundamental, macro and long term analysis.

Bill, Don't think that if you had an internship in S&T or Operations or some other non-banking position within an I-Bank that the situation would be incredibly different. Interns' bosses are often incredibly busy, and even BB interns often have nothing substantial to do a lot of the time. Finding valuable ways to both contribute and learn shit in these situations is a useful skill that takes practice to perfect.

Basically, the reason your boss isn't giving you real work is because he believes he will have to spend a lot of time to train you how to do what he does, and he's too busy to do that. Show your boss that you're capable of actually contributing to his research by reading on your own outside of what he gives you and demonstrating an interest in the material above and beyond what he expects. Nothing is set in stone, if he sees you're up for real work, he'll give it to you.

Is your boss a theoretical or empirical economist? By this, I mean do his papers just propose new theories and models for economies, or does he go about collecting data and running statistical tests on it? The second type of work is much more conducive to an undergrad's help, for pretty obvious reasons.

In my research stint, I was basically helping my boss collect data, though the data was very qualitative and required some interpretation on my part to collect in a quantitative, statistically useful format. I also understood exactly what would be done with the data, the tests that would be run on it, and managed to suggest some additional tests of my own.

thanks for all the reply. I spoke with him and he gave me some more work, finding relevant data and doing case studies. The only thing that I'm still a little concerned about is that all the work so far seems to be qualitative- alot of reading and writing, but no quantitative analysis on my part.

Is that going to be a big minus when I put this down on the resume?

Hi, I had an internship this summer very similar to the one described here. Basically all I did was mundane data processing and entering stuff into Excel for a professor as part of an ongoing project. Perhaps there will actually be something where I'll use my brain in the fall when we continue working on this but for now I was just an excel monkey.

How do I address this in interviews? Will an interviewer catch on that "ok the kid had a lame internship entering stuff into Excel" (which wouldn't be the worst conclusion to draw) and move on or will they still try to get a lot out of me on the subject? Obviously my tactic is to talk about the bigger picture for the project instead of the actual work I did but even then there's not much I can say because the summer's work was really just collecting and entering data.

Will this be a big negative compared to other people with PWM-like internships? For what it's worth, I have otherwise competitive credentials from a target school. Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated.

I would argue that it would actually be a positive compared to PWM-like internships. EVERYONE knows PWM is garbage, and it really -- in my opinion -- will not distinguish you from other candidates.

However, if you are participating in some interesting research project, the interviewer may be very interested and want you to elaborate on it. Also, a key role is how you address the job responsibilities on your resume. In order for it to not appear lame, you should explain how your job responsibilities helps achieve X goal.

I've done that stuff too, only it was during the school year. If asked about it, you should probably avoid talking about those mundane tasks the best you can. So you have the right idea in mind. It might be hard, but try playing around with the wording so you instead focus on the project as a whole. So tell them what you (i.e. really your professor) were studying. Just describe the overall goal of the project, methods, results you expect, etc. And make sure you make it sound interesting. You can even talk about any publications that will feature your "work" in some way or another. I'm sure you knew where your research was headed? Most professors, when they post these opportunities, make the big picture clear.

If you can't avoid talking about how big of a role you played, go into as little detail as possible, and hopefully the interviewer will change the subject. So don't say "typed numbers into a spreadsheet." All the mundane work can be summarized with "collected data for further analysis." Play with the wording, but just don't lie.

hey i got a research and teaching assistantship for a finance professor this semester and i've also been asked to be a student athlete tutor for finance and biz stats...Which one do you think will help me more in getting into a BB next summer.

thanks for the help

Take the research job. That will add to your cache of knowledge in finance. The tutoring will show you are willing to take a job while studying, which is good, but it's not going to be something where you are learning about finance; you'll be teaching it to others.

Koleon,

Do the research assistantship. Trust me.

thanks and do you think doing the research assistantship is a good extra curricular to do cause it does require a lot of hours a week..so is it worth it... thanks again