<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>Does getting a publication (conference or journal) really count into grad school?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>It helps alot but not having one will not hurt you nor will having one be an automatic ticket in.</p>
<p>It's a big deal. You should get as much experience presenting your research and writing manuscripts as possible, for your own benefit. A first-author paper in a decent journal will help you when you apply for external fellowships as well: fellowship programs like to fund people who can organize their own projects rather than just run experiments. Being middle-author is not as useful, but it shows that you do publication-quality work (and in all likelihood you will have contributed to project design and manuscript editing).</p>
<p>What about conference papers? I have one with me as a second author. For journal, the best that I got was acknowledgement for data analysis in nature nanotech.</p>
<p>Not having research will likely hurt you (if you assume that admissions is a zero-sum game, which it is, and consider that other candidates receive a benefit from their research). Therefore, they are given a better chance at securing a set number of spots, and you do not receive such a benefit. Thus, not having research in fact would work against you (unless you assume that most applicants to higher level programs do not have previous experience, which is not the case) .</p>
<p>But having research doesn't necessarily mean having publications. I have a project I worked on in undergrad two years ago that's only now going to see the light of day in a year or so, since it was the experimental basis for what turned into a much deeper project and will (hopefully) turn into a fairly influential paper.</p>
<p>I didn't get a paper out of it while an undergrad, but I sure as heck know that experience doing research has benefited me.</p>
<p>Most (virtually all) applicants to higher-level programs have research experience, but very few are published. My undergrad department, which is top 10 in its field, told us that around 5% of applicants are published (and around 20% of applicants are accepted), indicating that at least 75% of admits are not published. </p>
<p>I agree with others in this thread that publication as an undergraduate can be tremendously helpful, but is not a necessary condition for admission into a top program.</p>
<p>As a professor on an admission committee, I would suggest that it is much more important to have an understanding of what research you participated in AND to be able to explain it with enthusiasm if interviewed.</p>