<p>Lets say I wanna go to grad school after completing undergrad. Which would be more beneficial--Internship at a company or research? I'm currently involved with research and have even gotten UROP funds, too. Would one have more of an impact than the other ? </p>
<p>I know it's unlikely that there's a straight answer, but I would appreciate any responses!</p>
<p>Research hands down. It isn’t even close. Get in on the research and stay in. If you can eventually get mentioned in conference proceedings or a paper, or better yet, write one of your own, that is like gold to graduate admissions committees.</p>
<p>Research. (But that doesn’t mean you should do research)</p>
<p>On the contrary, the OP should do research. There really is no better way to increase your chances of admission than by doing research. It demonstrates that you have done research and liked it enough to continue, it demonstrates that you have experience in the lab and have juggled it with classes before, and it builds up a good, close relationship with one or more professors which leads to excellent letters of reference. If grad school is the goal, there aren’t many ways to cover as many bases at once and with as little effort as by doing research (of course by that I don’t mean to not put effort into research).</p>
<p>Can you do research on your own and then send it to a trade journal or a prof. publication in the field? I don’t know how many trade journals accept papers from undergrads though.</p>
<p>agreed. do research esp if ull get published</p>
<p>I suppose if you could fund research on your own, then sure, you could do research on your own. Research is unbelievably expensive though.</p>
<p>To clarify my previous answer:</p>
<p>If your one goal in life is to get into the most selective graduate school, then by all means choose research.</p>
<p>However, if your goal in life is to do something interesting, or explore your career options, or live in a particular city, or gain knowledge of the real world that your academic research will affect, or get experience to help make sure you’d rather do academia than industry, then maybe research isn’t the clear best option.</p>
<p>There is also the opportunity for you to do a “Research Internship” at a school different than the one you are going to currently. If you get into a good research internship, you could get published. A friend of mine had her work at North-Western (internship) published. Not a bad deal for something that only lasts a few months.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. I’m have a good feeling that all the time I’m putting this summer will influence the prof to allow me to be listed as an author on the paper when it gets published. Right now, I am considering grad school.</p>
<p>There’s also an undergrad in the lab that has done summer research at UC Berkeley and CalTech. So I will look into that, i wouldn’t mind being at another school for a summer while being productive at the same time. =D</p>
<p>I think there can be differentiation between Masters and PhD track, depending on the major. But I agree research is most valuable, unless your internship is in research too.</p>
<p>Hey,</p>
<p>So I’m currently involved in “research” with UROP funds as well. I’m an electrical engineering, and I do my research at a small growth company. For me, I have no chance at getting mentioned in a type of “paper” because I am further developing a product and I don’t think the PhD professors here write papers.</p>
<p>The UROP money was good though. ;)</p>
<p>If they are a professor at a major research university, then they write papers. At a company, perhaps not, but a lot of researchers in industry and non-academic research positions write papers too.</p>
<p>But just because they aren’t writing any doesn’t mean <em>you</em> don’t have a chance at getting any. Ask them to make certain that they don’t write and publish scholarly articles (seriously, that’s like the lifeblood of a researcher unless they are really firmly trenched in industry) and if they say no, ask them if you can transform your work into a paper - even a brief report - for a journal in your field. Even publishing in a student journal is worthwhile.</p>