<p>Hey guys!</p>
<p>Well, I am a Sophomore Aerospace Engineering student at Virginia Tech. By the way, I'm an international student from Venezuela. I decided that I want to go to grad school once I get my bachelor's degree here at Virginia Tech. </p>
<p>My question is: what do these schools expect from you regarding undergraduate research?? I'm currently starting my own project with a faculty here (improving performance by extending the length of the wings at the tip). Some people have done things like this before and it is not really a complex project. My professor said that since I am an Undergraduate, I should not worry about doing something complex, I should just focus on a simple thing that teaches me something new. Is it very important to have a publication in a journal?</p>
<p>I am also minoring in Leadership and Social Change and Mathematics. My overall GPA is 3.79 and in-Major GPA is 4.0. I don't have much working experience but I will probably get couple internships before graduating. </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>It depends on what kind of Masters degree you are interested in. IF it is a professional Master of Engineering, with no thesis, then research is not terribly relevant. If you are planning to enroll in a Master of Science, any research experience is valuable. Even something simple is fine because if you continue as a Junior or Senior you will be working on more complex problems and possibly have a publication.</p>
<p>Publications are nice to have but not necessarily required. More important is the letter form your research advisor(s) who can write very specific things about your abilities.</p>
<p>I’d also like to point out that you should get the “Ivy League” thing out of your head when it comes to engineering graduate school, particularly for aerospace. There are two Ivies that are worth anything in aerospace: Princeton and Cornell. Otherwise, just pass.</p>
<p>At any rate, I second most of what xraymancs said. Assuming you are doing a thesis-based MS, any research experience helps, and while publications are wonderful, they are not even close to required. It is very rare for an undergraduate to get a publication so the vast majority of incoming graduate students naturally don’t have them.</p>
<p>I may be wrong but “dream” graduate schools for best of the best AeroE majors you OP seem to aspire to be, are Stanford, GALCIT and MIT.</p>
<p>Regardless of the rankings, I would argue that MIT is the worst out of the three you just mentioned. I wouldn’t put MIT in the top 3, to be honest. Certainly a great program though.</p>
<p>Thanks for responding guys!</p>
<p>I think I will apply probably to 10 schools. I know that Georgia Tech, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Michigan, Purdue, Texas, and even Virginia Tech have great Aerospace Programs for graduate school. </p>
<p>So probably I will end applying to all of them. I also have to consider what one of my professors told me (He might be kinda biased because he went to Princeton), but he said that He thinks that MIT it’s just a “Research Factory” and schools like Princeton are “Universities”, meaning that MIT only cares about Research while Princeton wants to actually prepare and teach you.</p>
<p>Another thing, what do you guys think about funding for an M.S.? And what about trying for a PhD without the M.S.?</p>
<p>
If that isn’t a load of bull, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>I’ve been a student at both a “research factory” and a “university”, and I did not notice any difference whatsoever in their complete and total dedication to producing high-quality research. Every top program is a research factory.</p>
<p>Funny thing is that even though MIT is a top school , it is disregarded by companies in terms of recruiting. A top O&G company came to my school to talk about recruiting and showed us a powerpoint of the schools they recruit from. Tier 1 was A&M, UT, Purdue, and GA Tech. Guess what Tier 3 was? MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>@iambored10: I have heard the reasoning why some companies don’t like recruiting at those schools because they tend to find lots of arrogant people and they don’t really want to be around them, even if they are very good at what they do. I am sure that not all kids at these schools are like that, but there are bound to be a decent number.</p>
<p>Oil and gas companies don’t have a lot of bearing on the perception of programs in the aerospace industry, however. Oil and gas companies tend to be filling positions that are more hands-on, so to speak, and engineers from places like MIT clearly are more interested in other things on average. Aerospace companies tend to have a lot more of the high-level technical positions in my experience so this example isn’t necessarily correct when trying to apply it to the aerospace industry. This is especially true at the graduate level where the employers are typically hiring to fill even more technically specialized positions. It is simply a question of matched priorities. MIT grads and their career priorities don’t typically match the needs of oil and gas companies.</p>