Computer science research.

[pmb]

Computer science is a very young field. This is sort of trivially true when you compare it to, say, philosophy and mathematics, but also has consequences for my daily life. One thing it means is that seemingly-obvious questions have often not been asked. With a BS in CS you are qualified to begin answering many of them, if the question is

Comments

[nuclear_eggset]

I'm no expert in the fields, but it appears that this is to a smaller extent true in some fields of health, where it relates to nutrition/lifestyle(particularly stress)/epigenetics. They're starting to be asked, but the idea that your genetic expression changes (and that changed expression can be passed on, possibly skipping generations), it fairly new too.

[nuclear_eggset]

oh, hah. reading comprehension fail. an undergrad education is definitely *not* enough to answer the question here. unfortunately.

[freyley]

stem cell research,
proteinomics,
neuropsychology
many subfields of cognitive science
evolutionary psychology

Many of these you could ask intelligent questions with just a BA, but the equipment needed to answer them is more specialized and expensive.

[freyley]

also, behavioral economics, which is basically psychology discovered through the use of statistics and large experiments.

[freyley]

and while I'm on this roll, let me add physics. Because graduate string theory really doesn't teach you anything.

[freyley]

er, theoretical unified everything physics...yeah, okay, that wasn't a typo, just a casualo.

[omega697]

Political science.

[clipdude]

This is manifestly NOT true in math

One thing I’ve learned during this job search is that many math departments want new faculty members who can propose and direct undergraduate research projects, and have some idea how they might involve undergraduates in their research program. I’ve been asked about this in pretty much every interview I’ve had so far.

[pmb]

Right, but you have to VERY carefully architect your research around that goal in a way you don't have to do in CS (IMO).

[clipdude]

Oh, yeah. I can't imagine coming up with good research projects for undergraduates in mathematics is at all easy.

[zudini]

This is manifestly NOT true in math

I'm not sure I agree. One great strength of mathematics, perhaps the greatest, is that it can be very, very, very specific. By building the right vocabulary and choosing the proper abstractions, you can make it tractable to consider a question that is extremely specific. This increases the chance that it's never been asked before, without necessarly increasing the chance that you need more than a B.S. to tackle it.

Will the question and answer be interesting to more people than just you? I think that depends largely on the simplicity of the construction of the question, and the "beauty factor" of the answer.

[leech]

However, simple, interesting questions tend to be things that people have already thought of. Generally speaking, the more specific your machinery, the smaller the likelihood of it being (A) applicable to a problem of general interest or (B) easy to use. The rare tools that make good research tend to fulfill (A) but not (B).

[gustavolacerda]

Right, undergrads *can* do original research in math, by asking (relatively shallow) questions that have never been asked. (by shallow, I just mean not super deep)

Combinatorics is very fertile ground for coming up with new definitions, which makes it easy to ask original (but useless) mathematically interesting questions. However, for the same reason, it is hard to be sure that your questions haven't been investigated already, using different names for the concepts.