How it works
One profile, real openings, and an application written for the project.
Criteria vary by position. There is no universal student ranking on ResearchBridge.
Students
Five steps from profile to a conversation.
- 01
Create your profile
Basics, academics, skills, research interests, any prior experience, and your availability. Prior research is optional and plenty of positions are written for students who have none.
- 02
Browse open positions
Search and filter by field, department, compensation, hours per week, location, start term, year level, and whether the position accepts beginners.
- 03
Apply to specific projects
Your profile is included automatically. You answer only the questions this researcher wrote, which may include a response to a recent paper.
- 04
The researcher reviews your application
They see your responses next to the criteria they set for their own project, with the evidence for each one.
- 05
The researcher contacts selected students
You can follow the status of every application from one page, and you can withdraw at any point.
Researchers
Seven steps from a project to a placement.
- 01
Create a researcher profile
Your role, department, lab, research areas, and a short biography. Researcher accounts are reviewed before a position goes live.
- 02
Post a project
The research itself, what the student would actually do, the time commitment, the location, and the compensation category.
- 03
Define criteria
Add required conditions and preferred criteria. Required conditions are checked separately from preference weighting.
- 04
Add application questions
Short answers, long responses, yes or no, numbers, multiple choice, file uploads, and an optional response to a paper you attach.
- 05
Review applicants
Filter, open a candidate, read their responses, see criterion evidence, keep private notes, and update the application status.
- 06
Contact candidates
Record that you want to move forward. ResearchBridge notifies the student and keeps an audit event.
- 07
Close the opportunity
Mark the position filled or closed. Applications and history are preserved rather than deleted.
Evaluation
What a researcher actually sees.
Exact conditions are evaluated in code. Whether a student has ten hours per week available when the position asks for eight is arithmetic, not a judgment call, so it is computed directly from the profile.
Written material is harder. Claude is used to locate evidence in an application that relates to the criteria the researcher wrote, and to point at the passage it came from. It never produces a verdict, a ranking, or a percentage, and it never infers anything about a person's background.
A missing preferred criterion reduces only the share of the preference score attached to that criterion. It does not apply a penalty to the rest of the application. Where information is genuinely absent, the criterion is marked as not enough information rather than counted as a failure.
When Claude is unavailable, applications still submit, criteria still evaluate, and researchers still review candidates. The evidence panel simply shows that it is unavailable.
Jordan Adeyemi
Health Sciences, Year 2, 10 hours per week
Availability of at least 6 hours per week
Requirement metRequested: Required
Student availability: 10 hours per week.
Python or R
Evidence foundRequested: Preferred, high importance
Describes using Python and pandas to clean longitudinal clinical data.
BIOLOGY 2B03 or equivalent
Evidence foundRequested: Preferred, medium importance
BIOLOGY 2B03 listed under completed coursework.
Cell culture
No information foundRequested: Preferred, low importance
Nothing in this application relates to this criterion.
Evidence is tied to the criteria this researcher wrote for this project. No student carries a score between projects, and the researcher makes every decision.