<p>When trying for graduate schools in engineering, i know research is important. but how do grad school boards and professors and such look at research experience versus industry experience (i.e. internships or co-ops)? industry certainly provides you with experience in projects and things of that nature, possibly more than simple undergrad research. so my question is are the two interchangeable, and why would one be more important than the other?</p>
<p>In either case it will depend on the specific details of the position you held. Were you actually involved at all in the development of the project/experiment, etc?</p>
<p>I’ve met people at interviews with experience in academic research as well as those with industry jobs. It all depends on what you’re actual able to gain from that experience.</p>
<p>Also, do the people you’re working with in industry (or a think tank, whatever) have the kind of academic chops that an LOR from them would command some respect?</p>
<p>well since my current summer internship is for a Fortune 100 engineering company, i figure that qualifies, correct?</p>
<p>Depends on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. </p>
<p>Brand name labels “Fortune 100 engineering company” don’t matter as much as the substance.</p>
<p>so if i lack large amounts of research experience, but have multiple internships where i complete solid work, it will appear just as favorable as strong reasearch?</p>
<p>What kind of graduate program are you talking about? If the program is research-focused (PhD or research-focused Master’s) your industry experience is a (little) plus point but it doesn’t matter all too much. These programs don’t care about industry experience, only research. Why do they admit you? Because they think you may be able to produce novel research. Industry experience doesn’t help you in any way to do that. No research experience = no admission. No matter how much industry experience you have, it can’t make up for missing research experience.</p>
<p>It’s a different story if you are planning on applying to terminal (non-research-focused) Master’s programs. In that case your industry experience is a bigger plus and research experience is not strictly necessary.</p>
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No. Doing research in an academic lab means doing a lesser version of what grad students do, under the supervision of the exact same people who supervise grad students. It is as close as you can get to BEING a grad student. Doing an internship can mean a hundred different things, from a summer making coffee to a summer doing what would essentially be academic research done in a corporate setting… but that latter is hardly ever the case. In the vast majority of cases, an internship involves working on projects at a basic level, but is far more about teamwork and learning how to repeatedly implement some element of your education than research.</p>
<p>Put another way, there is a high correlation between success in undergraduate research and graduate research, and virtually no correlation between success (or volume) at internships and graduate research.</p>
<p>
No. For every engineer doing insightful research at a Fortune 100 engineering company, there are 50 more doing useful but not innovative work. Considering the risk to intellectual property, odds are very low that you would get real research experience in a major company.</p>
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Not even close. Multiple internships will give you great preparation for the workforce, but bad preparation for graduate study. Strong research gives decent preparation for the workforce and excellent preparation for graduate study. Plan accordingly and know that you cannot simultaneously optimize for every possible path.</p>
<p>What if I’d be applying for something related to immunology or pathology or molecular bio and have experience in a hospital lab? I applied for a job at a top ranked hospital for a lab assistant position (it’s all my education so far would qualify me for as a junior) and lab experience in pharmacology (i was there for a year and mostly worked under a grad student since I hadn’t taken high enough coursework)?</p>
<p>Does having hospital medical testing make any impact.or will it hurt me since it is not in a university lab?</p>
<p>@ladeeda6
It won’t hurt you, but it will most likely be looked at as relatively unrelated job experience. This is on the assumption that you are doing diagnostics, not research, since you normally don’t call an active research lab a “hospital lab.”
The best thing you can do to become more qualified for grad school is to do the kind of active, experimental design and research that you will continue with in your phd.</p>
<p>^^That’s also another thing. I’m not sure yet whether to go the PhD route or the Master’s route. I know for certain that I am not interested in teaching university-level science, but should that stop me from applying to PhD programs?</p>
<p>The only reason now why I’m not in a research lab is that I need a job that pays to help with school costs and research assistant jobs don’t pay at my uni and the professor who’s lab I worked in previously doesn’t even have the funding to pay graduate students so he surely couldn’t pay me (I was funded by an NIH grant that ended when I left my community college).</p>
<p>Also, if I were to take time off between undergrad and grad school and worked doing things like lab tech at a hospital or pharm company or lab assistant at a university, would that put me at a disadvantage compared to those that entered straight from undergrad or those that worked in research labs? I sort of assumed that because it’s still in a lab and related to what I want to do in the future, it wouldn’t hurt, but reading posts on here about how competitive grad admissions are, it still worries me. I want to start paying back on some of my student loans and save up for my own apartment by working for a year or so.</p>
<p>So potential employers look for internship experience, and potential grad schools look for research experience. What happens after grad school? These grad students have years of research but no work experience. How employable are they?</p>
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Pretty employable. Remember that to become a grad student in the first place you already have to be an above average student (in many cases exceptionally above average). You then add a couple of years of intense study in a particular area. It is presumed that any lack of industry experience is more than made up by the improved academic preparation and lab experience (where appropriate) during the degree.</p>
<p>It should be noted that graduate degrees successively narrow your focus, and therefore the number of potential employers, but also makes you generally more attractive to those employers.</p>
So does this imply it’s virtually impossible for engineers to get into top PhD programs if they didn’t do any research at undergraduate level?