shield
Lowell House

Lowell House

Lowell Fellowships Pages
Fellowships Home
General Information & Getting Started
List of Fellowships *new*
Applying for Fellowships
Frequently Asked Questions *new*
Advice for Sophomores *new*
House Nominations
Fellowships Resources

Advice for freshmen and sophomores

Thinking about the next step after college? Graduate school? Work? Fellowships?

For exploring potential career options & preparing yourself for that next step, working now at the following areas will be helpful.

Get to know some of your professors
Your professors are interesting people with lots of experience they'd love to share. They can be helpful both as you decide want you want to do in the future as well as be important for writing recommendation letters. It can be intimidating at first to approach professors, especially when your main contact in class is with a teaching assistant. Here are some ideas:

•When you find a professor in one of your classes who gets you excited about some aspect of the class, go to her office hours or email her to say you find "x" in her class very interesting and would she have any time to meet with you. Remember to use more formal email style such as "Dear Dr/Prof . . ." and proofread your email. When you meet, tell her what interests you share. You can ask her more about why she likes their field (professors love to talk about their research) or ask for advice about potential career, extracurricular, or research opportunities she would recommend. Or just see where the conversation goes. If you hit it off, keep in touch. Take more of her classes or see if there is a project you can work on together.

•Take advantage of smaller seminar classes to get to know your professors in an academic setting. Be prepared and speak up in class.

•Join a lab or research project with a professor. Look through university advertisements for positions or ask your academic adviser or one of your professors to recommend somebody to work with. Then you can email that person and say "My adviser Prof X recommended that I talk to you about the possibility of working in your lab."

•Invite interesting professors to dinner at Lowell! (You can ask together with some of your like-minded colleagues so you have a small group.) Faculty dinners are a great occasion for bringing a professor to Lowell House, but you can actually bring professors to the dining hall at other times too. Over dinner, you can ask your professors about memorable experiences they've had in their career (a little google search can be helpful here).


By your junior or senior year, you are going to need some idea of what you want to apply for (job, fellowship, grad school) and are going to need academic letters of reference from 1-3 professors who've taught you (1-2 in your field, perhaps one outside of your field) or worked on a project with you (if you took this route, which is highly recommended). If you have done a summer internship at a company or outside place, a letter from your supervisor could substitute for a letter from a professor in a field outside your own. The best letters come from people who know your work well and who know you personally, so you need to make the effort now.

Try out new extracurricular activities & find something you love to pour your energy into
Try out new activities whether it is sport, art, music, public service, research, and, when you find something you like, put your energy into it. These activities, even if they are non-academic, help you learn more about what you enjoy doing and what you might want to do in the future. When thinking about activities in regards to applications, it matters more that you show passion and commitment for what you do, rather than the specific activity that you chose. Although, as with most areas in life, altruism is an attractive quality.
Keep a folder with information on the activities you do, your role, time put in, and supervisor's contact info (if applicable). You'll need this info later if you list these experiences on an application. Consider keeping a journal of experiences or events that were meaningful to you in either academic or extracurricular activities. You might want to review this list later when writing your personal statement.

Keep your grades up as the first priority
When trying to divide time between your coursework and your extracurricular activities, put your coursework first. All the great work you do in your activities will not impress many potential employers or application reviewers if you weren't able to keep your grades up while doing it. Even if your career interests lie closer to your extracurricular activities, your performance on your coursework is used a proxy for how reliable and dedicated you will be in your main pursuits in the future (whether or not that happens to be in your concentration field or even academia).

There are some fellowships--for research, travel, and public service--that don't depend strongly on your grades. But there will be other opportunities that remain open to you only if you maintain a strong academic record.

Web site design by Alan Wagner