3rd author publications as an undergrad

Graduate School
1

<p>How important are publications in grad school admissions for engineering? Are 3rd author publications significantly worse than a 1st/2nd author?</p>

2

<p>If you’re an undergrad, any level of authorship is solid.</p>

3

<p>Also depends on the journal.</p>

4

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<p>The meaning of “3rd author” varies by discipline. For most pure math papers, the authors are listed alphabetically. In other disciplines the 3rd author might be the PI.</p>

<p>Why waste your time worrying about this? If you get a 3rd author publication, great. It’s always possible to have performed even better, but so what?</p>

5

<p>It depends how much work you put into doing the project and writing the paper. More specifically, it depends on how much work your recommender (I assume the PI for the paper) says you put into the paper. I was second author on a paper (listed alphabetically as is custom in math) but I think my recommender said I did as much if not more work than the first author, so that was viewed pretty favorably.</p>

6

<p>Tetra-I don’t think anywhere in my original post did I imply I was worried.It was curiosity.
None-Did your recommender say you did more work in the paper or in the LOR?</p>