Hey everyone, I just wanted other people to help me weigh my options about what I should do to optimize my grad school chances. Right now I have two choices, the first is to stay at the school I’m presently attending or pursue a transfer. If I stay at my current school I’ll graduate in four years with two majors (computer science and math) and one minor (data science). I’m just wondering if this hurts my chances or getting into a good grad school since I’m currently enrolled at a Liberal Arts College or would it be more beneficial to transfer into an undergraduate school dedicated to STEM?
Do you have research opportunities at your school, or during the summer by means of an REU?
Attending a LAC doesn’t by itself help or hurt. I suggest you sit down with the faculty at your current school and discuss your interest in grad school. They can help you identify the best programs in your field and what you would need to do by way of prep. They may also have ideas about relevant research opportunities and how you can access them.
My school has research opportunities available whether it’s participating in a professor’s work or getting an individual research project approved. As for what green678 mentioned about doing a summer program by means of REU, I’m not sure I fully understand what that means could you please clarify? What I essentially need to understand, is will graduate STEM program’s look down upon my application for coming from a liberal arts school?
REU stands for Research Experiences for Undergraduates, and it is funded by the National Science Foundation to promote undergraduate research. Researchers are given grant money if they agree to hire undergrads to work with their team. They are available in various STEM fields, and often give preference to students from Liberal Arts Colleges to come work for the summer because some of those students don’t have similar opportunities at their home institutions.
You can look through them here: http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp
Now that I know what REU is, i’ll definitely look into that regardless of which path travel down. Just answer one more question about it for me if you can, does REU allow people to travel out of state? As in if I go to an out of state college to do research will they find housing and other things?