FAQs

Participants should plan to to work on their projects for about 15 hours per week. This includes two weekly group meetings of 1-2 hours each with the project mentor. The group meetings will be on campus. Outside of those meetings, participants can spend the remaining work hours on or off-campus, as they see fit. We strongly encourage you to set up your own additional group meetings with your team to work on the material together.  

The SRP will be in person this year, on the UBC Vancouver campus. We hope to offer more projects in future years and have some of these be be purely remote.

Applying and participating in the SRP is free. 

Please note that the program will take place on the UBC Vancouver campus, so you will need to arrange travel to and from campus on the days that you will meet with your graduate student mentor.

No. The small-group setting of the SRP makes it very different from the typical first- and second-year courses. Meetings primarily involve group discussion, the content is driven by you and your interests, there are no exams, and problem sets are mainly there to give you something to explore with your teammates. Your marks don't really give us any sense of how well you'll do in this environment. 

On the application form, you will be prompted to indicate all of the projects that you are interested in joining, and to rank them in order of preference. You will automatically be considered for all of the projects that you indicate, but if you are accepted to the program, it will only be to one project. 

Absolutely! The project descriptions are only here to give you a general idea of what to expect. 

Part of what makes the small-group format interesting is that we can offer you a lot of support in situations like these. In the biweekly meetings, mentors will check in on everyone and make sure that you're understanding what's going on. If need be, we will be happy to set up additional one-on-one meetings to make sure you're not falling behind.

At the start of the program, mentors will set up an initial meeting with their team to identify goals based on everyone's experience and interests, but these objectives will be subject to revision as mentors better get to know their teams. Our objective in the SRP is to work with every participant to identify a project for them to work on that they will find interesting, challenging, and that they will be proud of having completed at the end of the program.

Most projects will have 2 to 4 students, depending on the graduate mentor's bandwidth. 

In  general, no. Since the program is only a few weeks long, we will not have enough time to carry out a research project. However, the reading projects all deal with modern research topics, so you will get a sense of what open research problems are out there in your area of interest. 

No! In fact, the SRP will prioritise applications from students without previous research experience. 

No. Participation in the program is not for credit and will not appear on your transcript, but the UBC mathematics department will issue certificates for completing the SRP.

There are several programs for undergraduates to learn advanced mathematics topics over the summer:

1. The Fields Undergraduate Summer Research Program (FUSRP).

2. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Undergraduate Student Research Awards (NSERC USRAs).

3. Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Virtual Experimental Mathematics Lab (PIMS VXML)

4. Summer Research Experiences (SREs).

5. Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Awards (WLI URAs).

There are also conferences that you may consider attending:

1. The Canadian Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (CUMC) is an annual conference for mathematics undergraduates.

2. The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) meetings take place twice a year, with one meeting in the summer. These meetings are not intended for undergraduates, but there are sometimes some undergraduate-friendly sessions.

No. If you are accepted to another summer program where you would be working with a faculty supervisor, we strongly recommend that you accept that one and turn down the SRP offer. One reason for this is that faculty supervisors can write you letters of recommendation for programs you will want to apply for in the future. 

Yes, but please note that the SRP will be a demanding program, so you will need to manage your time carefully. Contributing 10 hours of work per week is a requirement for participating in the SRP.  You will also be required to attend meetings with your group and graduate student mentor on campus twice per week.

Yes, but you are responsible for checking that your co-op allows this. Please note that the SRP will be a demanding program, so you will need to manage your time carefully. Contributing 10 hours of work per week is a requirement for participating in the SRP. You will also be required to attend meetings with your group and graduate student mentor on campus twice per week.

After the application deadline, the project mentors will meet to read all applications, decide who to admit to the program, and decide who will be working in which team.