Hello. Freshman CS major here. I just started with CS this year, and want to spend my summer working on some project so I can become more familiar with programming/analyzing data within the field of CS. I was accepted to an REU site at Temple University and an internship, and must decide which one I choose by tomorrow morning. Does anyone have any insight that could help me make this decision? Thanks!
It of course depends on the details of the internship, but industrial placements tend to be more beneficial if you want to work in industry. By the same token, if you want to go to graduate school or work in academic, the REU is probably better for you. Ultimately you can’t go wrong either way.
The REU is reliable/predictable that you will further your exploration of CS. The industrial internship could be thrilling and amazing, or (more likely), you will be given an assignment doing a small piece of boringness that you can’t possibly mess up, and then given a bit more, until by the end of the summer you are trusted enough to do something substantive and interesting- but now you are leaving. Or, you could end up stapling papers and looking over other peoples’ code.
Supervising interns is a very time-intensive job. Doing an REU with grad students and professors is more in your element- they are used to working with students like you.
Part of an internship is an initiation to how a business day/week/month and project is managed and run. It could be much more valuable than the REU if properly done.
The safer bet, if you want to further your CS knowledge and practice, is the REU. If you know something about the Internship that indicates that it could be amazing (not just the name of the company, but someone who has worked with these very people doing an internship in the past), it could be great. Coming out of Freshman year, I would bet on the REU this year.