To have a successful and meaningful UROP experience, you have to be:
You could be in your dream biophysics lab and still not have fun because you’re mostly building custom lab software when you’d rather be doing starfish experiments. Or you could feel unsupported if you When looking for potential UROP supervisors, it is not immediately obvious what the day-to-day is like for their projects. So
A UROP requires time to be successful. My general guideline is that you need at minimum 8 hours a week devoted to your research, 4 hours needs to be in one block to make good progress, and 2 hours through the week that overlap with your research supervisor.
Your direct research supervisor most likely will not be the faculty member but a postdoc or graduate student. This is actually great because they will have more time to mentor you. Different groups organize their work differently, but the goal should be to have something to present at the faculty member’s group meeting once per month.
A paper is great for graduate school. A publishable result is not possible with one semester of work. After 2 semesters or a semester and a summer, it should be possible to outline a paper. It takes at least 2-4 semesters to prepare a paper. Summer and IAP are great times to devote to research and make good progress.
This is a relationship and like all relationships communication is key. You should be comfortable telling them when you need more guidance. You should also be comfortable telling them that you need to focus on classes during certain parts of the semester. Not all projects work and not all mentor relationships click, no one will be upset if you want to try something else. Just be sure to communicate!