<p>I'm a college freshman who just finished my first semester at an Ivy. I'll probably be a physics major. I took challenging courses last semester and ended up with a 4.0. By the end of this year, I'll have taken two semesters of math, two of physics, and one of chem. I have some limited research experience from high school. </p>
<p>My question is this: I'm looking at summer opportunities, and have seen that most REUs and similar programs are looking for rising juniors/seniors. What sorts of opportunities are out there for after freshman year?</p>
<p>I don't live near the school I attend, so doing research there over the summer isn't really practical.</p>
<p>All of the REUs that I’ve seen offer housing for non-local students. Here’s a physics REU that’s looking for students that have finished their freshman year:</p>
<p>Thanks for the info! My only concern for programs like this is that, with applications due in Feb/March, I’ll have difficulty getting three recommendations from physics faculty. </p>
<p>I think that I could get a decent recommendation from the professor I had last semester (it was a large lecture, so I don’t know him really well, but he does know my name at least!). However, in terms of additional recs, I won’t be starting classes again until the last week of Jan., so I probably wouldn’t be able to get recs from spring semester profs. </p>
<p>I’ll definitely look at programs requiring 1-2 recs, though. Does anyone have a sense of how competitive REUs typically are?</p>
<p>I missed the part about three recommendations - that is tough to do for a freshman. Perhaps you could ask them if you could do two physics and one math or chem. They might not realize that freshman students have only had one semester.</p>
<p>Cornell has an REU for physics (and other) majors and asks for two recommendations. I think that Harvard and MIT have REUs related to astrophysics and astronomy.</p>
<p>Our son’s REU accepted 10 out of 70 applicants last summer. I saw an REU last year that was still looking for students in May - it appears that they didn’t have enough students applying to fill the slots that they had. My guess is that it’s all over the place depending on projects, locations, etc.</p>