By Ritvik Rai (2018B1AB0615P). He converted his SOPs into 2 publications, currently under review.

Something that we take for granted as students in our undergraduate education is the importance of study projects (SOP/LOP/DOP). We often consider them to be just for the purpose of getting easy marks and grades. While these projects, if chosen wisely, can be of great value to our profile and exploring our interest. Students often try to get a project under a professor that gives them easy grades without any major evaluation, while the focus should be on how to align these projects either with the industry requirement or with our area of interest. In this article, the same will be explained with the help of 3 examples and how these projects benefited me.

Case 1: Humanities Project to Publications + Internships

My interest is inclined towards entrepreneurship and business. I had an opportunity to work on a project type course under the guidance of a humanities professor. Since I somehow had to showcase my interest in the field of business, I ended up finding a professor of organizational psychology. The business world is a lot dependent on human and consumer behaviour, hence I chose the topic aligning the same to understand how advertisements with the help of colour psychology play with the human mind and influence consumer decision.

The project did end up well, ended up getting an A grade but that was not all that I had aimed for. I used this project as the major attraction while cold mailing professors abroad, towards getting a research internship (More of which I might talk about in the later articles).

The role of the project did not end here and I collaborated with a friend of mine to work on a research paper aligning with this project. We ended up writing a proper research paper under the guidance of the same humanities professor. How did the project help? Firstly, ideating the research paper and making a skeleton of what I wished to showcase through my research, a bit of data and structure for the research paper was taken up from the earlier project. And that is how the nearly 40 hours that were spent on the project earlier turned out to be resourceful while writing the actual paper since no time went waste. Precisely what I mean is, most of us work and invest sufficient time on our project type courses but do not aim to do anything impactful with it and the potential of the project is always left unrealised.

We ended up writing the research paper in no time, roughly it took us 10 days to prepare the first draft. The research paper was then presented in a paper presentation competition and got us to be the runners up of the competition/conference as well, moreover, we were able to use this project and research paper coming out of it, for our off-campus internship search. The project gained quite a lot of appreciation and interest from top Business Schools professors (like INSEAD, Wharton, Monash) and is the showstopper of most of our conversations.

Hence, something which may sound as simple as a “humanities project” can be taken into your favour and help you a lot in your career ahead.

Case 2: Project in a Branch of Little Interests to Publication

The second project was in the Biology domain, I am sure for most of you, you might not consider it to be relevant but the thing I will be talking about here of major importance is the strategy behind taking up a project and making it relevant to your domain.

So, I had taken this project under one of the professors in the Biology department whose research interest aligned with the fields of ecology. The project was titled “Analysis and effects of stubble burning on the Air Quality Index". As I mentioned, my interest was never in biology, but in the fields of management. I had to somehow convert this project (more specifically, a biology project) into my favour, for most of us know that Sustainable Management is a field much talked about these days as most of the giants move towards eco-friendly solutions and have taken up initiatives towards the same. Even considering my second major which is in Manufacturing, Sustainable management/manufacturing is an ever-growing field.

By now I had understood the hours spent on a project, and I utilized the time efficiently in framing up ideas, building and collecting resources on it, and writing another research paper. Didn't take me any extra added efforts, just a bit more diligence, got involved with a friend of mine and ended up completing more than 75% of the paper within the semester. After compre, I spent a few more hours, and then the paper was ready and ready to be published.

One might argue that writing a research paper would take a hell of a lot of time, but my counter-argument would be first, you won’t end up wasting the first 40-50 hours that you initially spent during the project course work, and you won’t have to make a silly 30-40 page end semester report which no one would even read, just a 10-page meaningful paper would be sufficient to get you the A grade and even a publication on your profile.

This research paper is written with such precision and guesstimates that it can be later on pushed forward as a policy recommendation towards different government bodies. It has even opened ways for me and got me another project in a similar domain, thus proving my credibility in front of professors who may only have the “CGPA” criteria for selecting students.

Case 3: Project to Startup

The third project again aligns with my entrepreneurial journey and is in the domain of Manufacturing. I had already been working on a venture single-handedly, for the past few months, and wanted to explore more and gain some sincerity towards the same. The pitch deck was already ready, so I found a professor in the Manufacturing department whose interest lies in product prototyping.

This opened ways for me to dig a bit deeper into my idea since the professor had quite a bit of knowledge in the same domain and can be a potential source of help. The idea behind the project is to convert an idea from 0 to 1 in the most practical way by getting our hands dirty. I will also aim to use resources available on campus, to add more impactful and credible work to my profile. This will begin next semester.

In Conclusion...

One might have a contradictory opinion regarding my approach of working, but something I have learned over time and even while working on various such projects, that the best way to learn while having a partially fixed approach (knowing your end goal mildly) is by fixing your broader goal and being dumb while traversing towards achieving it. Also, try using your branch’s projects to your advantage, even if your interests do not lie in your branch of study. In my case, my goal is broadly management and specifically entrepreneurship, even though I am a Bio+Manufacturing student. It can be a different goal for you, as long as you keep hustling towards your interests, you’ll notice good stuff coming your way.