#dornsife intern

[uscdornsifeadmission]

I represented Dornsife College as the flag bearer for the New Student Convocation. Honored to represent the school that I love and crazy to think that time has flown so quickly ✌❤️💛

[uscdornsifeadmission]

(Re)search And You Shall Find - Kenna Nguyen

If you had asked my 15-year old high school self whether or not I was interested in doing research in college, I wouldn’t have even known that it was a possibility. As my second year at USC comes to a close, I can comfortably laugh at my 15-year old self because research, in fact, has become a key piece of my undergraduate experience. 

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I joined a neuroscience laboratory in the Hedco Neuroscience Building right on the University Park Campus (USC’s main undergraduate campus). My research involves looking at the neural mechanisms and brain structures that are involved with hyperaggression to better understand several major diseases and disorders in humans such as schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, and alcohol/drug misuse. In order to study this, we use rat brains from rats that have undergone a limited feeding schedule and then have been exposed to intruder rats during the behavioral part of this study. This exploits a rat’s natural territorial aggression. Using histology, neuroanatomy, microscopy, imaging, and analysis of the brains, we are able to better understand how and where hyperaggression is expressed in the brain.

Some of the highlights from my research experience this year are my involvement in BISC 490x, receiving various grants to fund my work, as well as participating in the Undergraduate Research Symposium. I will briefly explain what each of those are:

BISC 490x is student-proposed, faculty-supervised research that can be used to earn from two to four units of elective credit in a semester. The advantage of doing a 4-unit BISC-490x course is that I received 4 units of upper division elective credit for my major, Biological Sciences.

The SOAR (Student Opportunities for Academic Research) program provides funding to Dornsife undergraduates for participation as a research assistant in a faculty member’s project. I was able to receive $1,000 this academic year as a grant for the research project that I am a part of.

The Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work provides undergraduates with the unique opportunity to exhibit and share examples of their significant research and creativity with the university community. This was a great opportunity to share the project that I have been working on throughout the year. I created a poster that I then presented to judges at the symposium!

[uscdornsifeadmission]

Summer In Hong Kong - Philipp Hultsch

Last summer, I got the opportunity to work in Hong Kong for ten weeks. I had never been to Asia before. I would be going alone and was unsure of what the experience would be like. And even though I was ecstatic to be back in Los Angeles when the semester began, it was an eye-opening experience that I will always be thankful to have had.

For my internship, I was looking into the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the e-commerce industry in China and did specific analyses on three companies and the effect of emerging technologies on their stock prices. The job itself was an incredibly valuable experience, and I learned skills that I will absolutely use coming into whatever career I end up going into. Even though the job took up a lot of my day, the city itself, and the influence of being a USC student there, is what really struck me.

For those people that have never been, Hong Kong is an almost indescribable place. It’s a sort of mesh between a simple lifestyle and the absurd pace of the city, its own sort of cultural mixing pot, and unique in just about every way. 

The USC community, even more than seven thousand miles away, was something that I never expected. Even though I was there living alone, I quickly realized that wherever I went there was someone either connected to the school or even a current student. By my third or fourth week I had met probably thirty or forty new USC students that were all in the city and we bonded over exploring a new city that none of us had ever really been to.

Lastly, my internship pushed me in a more technical route, which I had never fully done before. I learned a bit of coding and heard people talk about how important those quantitative skills, alongside a liberal arts education, would be. With that, I decided to delve deeper into my Applied Analytics minor and take more coding classes than required. So, my quest to graduate as a major in International Relations & The Global Economy with minors in Business Finance and Applied Analytics (yes, it’s possible) continues. My summer and this semester have both pushed me in directions that I never thought I would go, and USC has presented me with an environment and community that only helps me expand those horizons.

[uscdornsifeadmission]

Students get rare insights into inner workings of our legal system > News > USC Dornsife

Undergraduates interested in pursuing careers in law get a head start by taking Antonio Elefano’s “Advanced Legal Writing” course. [4 min read]

Writ on!

[uscdornsifeadmission]

London Town! - Christian Cousins

My name is Christian, and I am a senior at USC studying International Relations. Last Spring, I studied abroad in London. Specifically, I studied at the world-renowned War Studies Department at King’s College London. It was an absolutely incredible experience, and hopefully this blog post will get you excited to study abroad as well!

Studying abroad teaches you so much about the world, as well as yourself. You often find yourself out of your comfort zone, but you learn so much in the process. The first new thing I had to tackle in London was public transportation. In LA, it is very rare that I would use public transportation, while in London, it was a daily occurrence. At first the tube (London’s underground railway/metro system) seemed daunting, but shortly after my arrival, I was an expert with public transportation.

Living in London was incredible. It is such an amazing, diverse city, with some of the best restaurants and bars in the world. I still dream about the authentic Indian food at my favorite restaurant in London, Dishoom, and the rooftop bars offering panoramic views of the city. 

An additional bonus was that everyone had amazing accents, and they were all so friendly! I had a fear that there would be a stigma against Americans in the UK, but luckily, that myth was swiftly debunked. 

There is so much history in London, and it was often breathtaking to visit sites such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. I was lucky enough to be in London during the Royal Wedding, and I even spotted the Queen!

There was also lots of opportunities to travel with friends throughout Europe. I traveled to Spain, France, Greece, Monaco, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Croatia, and Ireland! As a huge Game of Thrones fan, my favorite trip had to be to Croatia. The country is breathtaking, with incredible beaches, castles, and mountains everywhere you look. My friends and I went on a four-hour Game of Thrones tour, where we were able to see where episodes for the show were filmed. I geeked out the entire time.  

Going abroad was such an amazing experience. It helped me to excel my studies and learn from a new perspective. But most importantly, it was the adventure of a lifetime. 

[uscdornsifeadmission]

The Wide World Of Health - Jake Eom

If you ever have a spare 2 units and a burgeoning interest in the medical field, I suggest you look no further than MEDS 220.

To be honest, I was a little skeptical when I signed up for the class. “Preparation for the Clinical Experience,” the class title boasted. As someone dead-set on a career in medicine, it checked all the boxes, and my interest was piqued, yet I still couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of doubt that the class would not be valuable.

I could not have been more wrong.

The class is designed to feature a guest speaker every week from a different field of medicine to provide the more diverse, broad perspective of the clinical experience. From day one, I was hit with the realization that there was much more to medicine than the white-coated doctor. The first lecturer I listened to talked about HIPAA, which is a bill that protects patient privacy. It wasn’t something I had ever considered to be vital or even remotely interesting, but then I was presented with the hypothetical ethical dilemmas of working as a volunteer and accidentally reading a patient report, or very real examples of a patient whose hospital experience and eventual passing was used for commercial entertainment purposes. It reminded me that first and foremost, the patient had every right to their privacy, especially if it risked trauma to family and friends when used for non-educational purposes. 

The next lecturer talked about the use of geospatial data, such as mapping out cases of cholera outbreaks to see where the source was and thus how to better identify the cause, or overlaying sites of drug overdose onto city maps in order to see how best to keep emergency supply stations distributed for the safety of overdose victims. The lecturer worked in the emergency department, but he didn’t restrict himself to thinking that was the only place he could make a difference; he extended that hand of medical aid to the surrounding area by figuring out patterns and trends in hospital data.

In a mere two hours every week, I have my expectations of the medical field subverted over and over again. It’s a relief, however; knowing that I am learning better and better the endless ways to help the people around me is worth the sting of accepting that I knew next to nothing when I started my path to medicine. I can only hope that learning never stops.

[uscdornsifeadmission]

Top Recruit - Philipp Hultsch

Hi, I’m Phil. I’m a senior now. It’s time to face the future after school, and it’s a bit scary to have to leave the place I’ve called home since I was eighteen. Because of that I’m going through the recruiting process!

As background, recruiting is the process of attending talks for companies to hear about what they do and to network. After that, you apply, get called in for interviews, and those typically happen on campus! It may seem like a stressful time – and it sure does take up quite a bit of your week – but it does often work out. So, take a look at the list of companies recruiting at USC, and see if you have any interest in them. I have some advice for all of you interested in Dornsife, so that maybe you won’t make some of the mistakes I did!

1)    You really don’t have to be a Business major to recruit. Please don’t think that, because I did. Companies will have interest in any and all majors, and if you show interest in them and what they do, things typically work out.

2)    Get ahead of the game. Start Junior year if you have any interest, and then you may not have to worry about it Senior year! From a timeline perspective, believe it or not, recruiting starts the first week of school. Consulting companies host Trojan Talks beginning the third day of school, and their applications are due soon after. I missed some deadlines myself because I didn’t know how early these applications were actually due.

3)    Try more than one thing! Attend as many Trojan Talks as you can because these companies may have projects that you may have never thought of. When I attended a consulting Trojan Talk, I saw that one of the companies did quite a bit of work in the public, non-profit, and governmental sectors. Since I major in International Relations and the Global Economy, that made me particularly interested in working there.

At this point last year I thought I just kind of wanted to stay in school forever, but that’s slowly changing. Overall, being a senior can be a stressful time for the job hunt. Even though it can feel a bit overwhelming at times, falling back on your friends and communities at USC is something that this school has always been and will always be great for.

[uscdornsifeadmission]

Sitting For My LSAT - Julia Doherty

 My Junior year of college I finalized my post-graduate plans and realized my dream of Religious Conflict Mediation meant that law school was in my future. After meeting with one of my favorite professors, Professor Sandholtz, during office hours, he opened doors for me by letting me know that attending law school for me didn’t need to mean that I had to practice law after school but that for a future in diplomacy law school is a perfect first step. This refocused the rest of my college path. Instead of committing to my internship offer in banking for the summer I decided to stay in Los Angeles, work on campus and get in full study mode for the upcoming LSAT.

One of my friends that had graduated the year before and is currently attending Hastings Law School in San Francisco recommended an online prep course that laid out a fourteen-week plan that I was able to do at my own pace which worked really well for my schedule as I was working during the day and would study in the mornings and evenings. My friend Erica from the Dornsife Admission Office was also studying for LSAT this summer which was great because I had a companion to go through what can be an overwhelming process as I had not taken a standardized test such as this since my junior year of high school.

While I am not planning on applying to law schools for this cycle I wanted to take the test while I was still in an academic setting as I knew that my focus and motivation would be higher under those circumstances. So, the first weekend in September, when all of my friends were up in the Bay Area for the annual Weekender migration, I sat in a ballroom in downtown Los Angeles and took a test that would set me up for my future.

I am excited for a future and a career path that, right now while uncertain, brings out my deepest passions and excites me to get up and go to class every single day. A year ago, the thought of not actively recruiting for jobs when others were or not knowing exactly what I will be doing next year would have left me paralyzed. However, the fact that I know that in two years I will be sitting in a law school classroom discussing topics that I have been fascinated with since age 7 brings me so much joy and hope for my future, and I am excited for the gap year that will set me on the best path to apply to those schools.