<p>D was a STRIDE at Smith but you don't have to have a STRIDE to find a prof who is happy to have you do research with him or her. I believe in the value of undergrad research and it's something you don't get often at larger universities because the grad students hog all the opportunities (though some, like UCLA, are beginning to have special, formal undergrad research programs). You may have to ask around and be assertive, perhaps starting with STRIDE opportunities that no one else selected as a means of identifying needs that you are simpatico with, but it can be done.</p>
<p>D's first year STRIDE led to some additional NSF-funded research with the same prof during the summer between first and second year. </p>
<p>Summer between second and third years was spent in the Picker DC program, which is of only minor relevance to this thread.</p>
<p>D could not find a full-time internship for the summer between third and fourth years. She had been in Hungary for the Spring and finding/applying was just too difficult. There was one application of note, however, where they took someone who come earlier and stay later, due to the academic calendars, to a total of something like six additional weeks; they chose that student but invited D to apply to the organization for a regular research assistant job upon graduation.</p>
<p>So she wound up with two part-time internships near home, one in a Congressional field office and one in a satellite office of the State Treasurer. While the DC experience helped her land the first, it was the STRIDE research that helped her land the second.</p>
<p>Fall of senior year, D duly applied for the RA position she had been invited to apply for. There were more than 100 applicants for the job and she got it. As part of the application process, they called her reference at the State Treasurer's office...it was not a pro forma reference check, but a phone conversation lasting something like 20-40 minutes. (If you've never handled a reference check, that is a <em>long</em> time.)</p>
<p>Some of the senior staff in the organization's field are well known in their field and it's a moral near-certainty that a letter from one of them is what got D accepted into the top grad school program she's going to. (It was a supplemental letter that he wrote only to this one institution because he knew people there.)</p>
<p>You shouldn't do something just because it's a stepping stone. (Ick.) But you should be aware of how something can <em>be</em> a stepping stone. Undergrad research is one of those possibilities.</p>