<p>I'm trying to get into an academic summer internship in math. And looking for advice on my application essay.</p>
<p>The program isn't an REU, it's kind of a half-summer course and half-collaborative research. I doubt I'll be accepted because I'm an engineering major and my prior summer/semester research projects haven't been related to math.</p>
<p>The essay prompt is to describe my academic goals and how participating in the program will help achieve those goals. No length is given.</p>
<p>I currently have 341 words and feel like I'm not writing enough. I've stated I don't know what specifically I want to enroll in grad. school for, which is one of my reasons for wanting to gain hands-on experience in mathematical research. In the essay I've also included a somewhat trivial example of how taking a mathematical perspective on a past research project allowed for us to approach a problem that would have otherwise been impossible from a more brute-force perspective. I used that example to try and show that even if I don't pursue mathematics, the skills are useful in any scientific discipline I'm interested in. <--But I feel that my example might be way too trivial. Although If I remove it, I'd be left with two small paragraphs of text.</p>
<p>Any advice or tips? If anyone has examples of your own writing for this type of thing, that would be awesome (you don't have to post it publicly: <a href="mailto:xdentan@yahoo.com">xdentan@yahoo.com</a>) I'm just trying to get a better idea of what I should write about.</p>