<p>Hey guys, I was wondering just how important internship experience is for master's programs.</p>
<p>I'm an electrical engineer and I will be graduating in a year and I haven't had any internships but I will have several semesters of research experience (mostly in Physics and some in EE).</p>
<p>So how will no work experience affect my chances of getting into decent schools?</p>
<p>Real research experience usually trumps internships…</p>
<p>It depends on your career goals. Do you want to become a practitioner or a researcher? Practitioner-based programs value the whole package (research, internships, work experience, extracurriculars). Research-based programs want to see research experience (lab experience, thesis, peer-reviewed articles, presentations).</p>
<p>For MS or PhD:
Research experience is gold
Internship experience is icing on the cake.</p>
<p>As long as your research experience is solid, lack of an internship won’t affect you in the slightest bit in my opinion.</p>