<p>I'm a 3rd year chemical engineer and I've been involved in research for the past year. I've also been applying to internships lately just to see if I could get a call and I got an interview coming up next week for an engineering firm close to campus.</p>
<p>I was wondering if it's possible to handle both on-campus research and an outside internship simultaneously in the summer time. I believe the internship is full time (40 hrs) whereas my self-research, with UROP funding, requires 35-40 hrs a week. My dilemma is, I'm an optimist and I want to try to fit both in by taking a cut in hours in one or the other. Basically, I'm debating between a) writing a technical paper with funding or b)working and getting paid a lot or c)trying to do both and be very busy, but productive, this summer.</p>
<p>My ultimate goal would be to go to a top 10 chemical engineering graduate school for my MS or Ph.D.</p>
<p>Engineering student here too. Did it during my Junior year: 40-50hr/week internship in industry, SURP/UROP funded research, engineering classes, and another part time job (for the first part of summer until everything got too crazy). Definitely doable if you are used to putting in crazy hours for engineering classes/projects on the regular, but social life definitely suffered a bit during that period of time. Personally, I wouldn’t do it again but go for it if you can handle the workload and still excel where necessary.</p>
<p>The hardest part will be consistently keeping up with the pace, but if you can fall into a set groove that works and stick to it there should be no issues beyond being a bit tired constantly.</p>
<p>Attempting both is a very poor idea, if you ask me. You won’t get a break in hours for an internship and probably not from a formal UROP program either.</p>
<p>Definitely stick with the research if you want to go to a Ph.D program. If your’e going to be writing a paper, even better. Research counts a lot for graduate school, but keep in mind that it may not count for much with employers. An internship would help you more if you were thinking about that.</p>
<p>If you’re writing a paper, definitely do the research. That could be one of the big things you have going for you to get into a top 10 school. Not that it’s required, but it certainly would make life a lot easier.</p>
<p>I’ve done summer internship + research + engineering summer classes all at the same time. It definitely was not easy. Keeping a balance between social life and everything else is difficult on a 60+ hour work week, but doable. If you are planning to attempt both, definitely talk to your supervisor(s) first and let them know of your situation. If you are upfront about it then a few hours lost here and there are a nonissue so long as you get your work done (and done well).</p>
<p>A typical weekday went for me like this: wake up EARLY and go to work, get off work and go to research, get off research and go to class, after class go back to research, hang out with friends, head home completely exhausted and knock out hard. </p>
<p>Weekends were pretty much devoted to work first then hanging out with friends later in the evening. Getting ahead during the weekends was definitely crucial for the upcoming week.</p>
<p>Company culture really helped my schedule out as most people were there earlier in the day. If you must do you research at the same time when the most people are working in the company then there will be conflicts.</p>
<p>I’m doing that right now actually, internship + research. Although my research is only about 10 hrs/week. I say go ahead and do it if you don’t care about having a life. I don’t care hence the reason I’m doing it.</p>
<p>As a researcher and someone who oversees graduate students every summer on their research projects and mine own, I think its completely unrealistic to accomplish anything meaningful after your day job. So what is this research that you can do at nights?</p>
<p>Graduate schools don’t just care about ticking a box “yup he did research”. They will want to look at the quality, the product you created, the publication you obtained, and strongly consider what your coauthors and professors thought of working WITH you. This isn’t a term paper you do on the side. Well it might be, but that isn’t going to help with graduate school admissions.</p>
<p>I’m not a ■■■■■; I realized I asked this question before, but I only got a response from Anteat3r (thanks for the response btw) so I decided to ask it again so I could get more opinions. </p>
<p>Thanks for the responses, I’ve decided to try to handle both for the first week or so. If it ends poorly and I simply can’t adjust, I’ll stop the research as I have been working with my professor for quite a while and I want to gain some experience working in the field. </p>
<p>Sorry for the poor forum etiquette btw, won’t happen again.</p>