<p>I'm an undergrad student at a 60-70th ranked undergrad mechanical engineering university and plan to get into a top ME graduate institution. I will start research soon as an undergrad sophomore but with basic stuff such as cleaning stuff for now I think until I acquire more skills. I was wondering how important is getting something published and how advantageous is it to have a publication on your application for a top tier grad school? Is my chance of getting in one greatly reduced if I don't have a publication? also the place I will be researching at hasn't had any undergrads that have published anything there from the looks of the website, could that be a downside?</p>
<p>Very few undergrads are published. Just do the best job you can and as long as the professor likes your work you will be fine. Again, undergraduates being published is very rare.</p>
<p>It is very unusual to have pubs in some fields as an undergrad. In my field its required for getting into top schools, in other fields it is not. I know quite a few students who have done so in physics, but not sure about engineering (but boneh3ad would know). </p>
<p>I had written earlier about this, trying to describe an ideal end point is to get a publication, not that one that is necessary or even likely. The idea is to get experience, not so you can ‘tick a box’ to say ‘Yup got that covered’. I was trying to convey that the whole point of doing so is to build up your experience and skills, discover if you are cut out for and love research, and so that the professor you are working for can predict, and write about in his or her recommendation letter, how well you might do in a PhD program (at the extreme end of this goal would be a coauthor role). </p>
<p>Stop worrying about it though. You aren’t changing schools so work with what you have. Find an area you are excited about first and foremost, then in that area a professor who is motivated to invest in you, and (in your ideal world) that professor also happens to be one of the more accomplished researchers in his or her group (working with well known faculty in their field will be more valuable than less well known, especially if you are coming from a lesser known school).</p>
<p>None of this is black and white nor completely controllable or predictable (it’s a subjective complex probabilistic process). There are lots of ‘ideals’ but you can not have everything. All you can do is make your record as strong as you can (meaning the higher your GPA, the quality of your undergrad education, your GRE score, your research experience and record, and letters of rec from faculty), the higher the probability you will get into grad school (and the quality of that grad school).</p>