<p>I got into this 5 week research program at a college near my town. For this, I will be working on an actual project with a college professor. Although this would be a great experience, I don't think it's really worth it to spend 8 hours in a lab every day. If I do summer school, instead, it could boost up my gpa (i am barely number 1) and i could do other things like work, self-study, and volunteer. whereas if i accept the internship, my time for those 5 weeks will be very limited and i won't find time to do other things. I dont know what to do. The program is not "prestigious", it's just experience in an actual college lab, which would benefit me if i apply to ba/med programs.</p>
<p>what would you do? take the internship or go to summer school, work, and volunteer???</p>
<p>btw i am a jr</p>
<p>i'd say take the internship. research is really really cool.
but you seem to be pretty set on summer school, so go with what you think would be more fun.</p>
<p>it sounds like your pretty much already set on the summer school so go for it, sounds like you can pack quite a bit into your day so it should be worth it.</p>
<p>on the other hand, if you're thinking about applying for a science major in college it would be an awesome addition to your application if you could say you worked with a college professor on published science research. I did research the summer at the end of my junior year (albeit by myself not with a professor) and though it wasn't the most fun in the world it definitely was interesting as i was exploring an idea i had wanted to uncover for myself for a long time.</p>
<p>If you're considering a career in the sciences it might be helpful to see first hand what a career in research science is like.</p>
<p>On the other hand if it's a small, unrecognized school that the prof is working at the lab might (probably) be poorly funded and under equipped, due to the difficulty in obtaining grants for researchers at smaller schools.</p>
<p>In a lab I worked at a few summers ago on an REU, we also had a high school student. He really enjoyed his time there, and learned quite a bit while working there. Here's a link so you can see where those students ended up: PennerGroup</a> - Outreach If you're too lazy to click, here's the schools: 4x Berkeley, 2x MIT, Dartmouth, Caltech, and Harvard.</p>
<p>I would try balancing both.</p>