<p>I got accepted to both of my top choices. Since I'm interested in both of them, I would like advice on which one is better in terms of going to graduate school.</p>
<p>Some Highlights:
Professor Lee went to Harvard and MIT, and Penn is an ivy league school
Cover's living expenses, housing, travel, and pays $4,650
Robotics research topic</p>
<p>I’d take the Penn one unless you really want to live in Germany for a summer. The professor there is more likely to have connections to other professors at top schools. I’d try and find out what your responsibilities would be in each program, though, since maybe one would be more interesting in that aspect than another.</p>
<p>Also, nobody in the grad admissions committee will care that Penn is Ivy League. They just care about the strength of the program, the professor you worked with, and the quality of the work you did while you were there.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. The UPenn seems to be more concrete about what research I will do when I’m there, whereas the Germany one seems to be more about the international experience. Now I just got accepted to an REU at Virginia Tech. The research at UPenn is exactly what I’m doing right now (which I enjoy a lot, but will have the opportunity to continue next year), and the stuff at VT seems interesting, but I really don’t know enough about the subject to determine exactly how interesting. Would you still go with UPenn?</p>
<p>Also, do you have any idea on how competitive these REU’s are? I know some are more competitive than others.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to say how competitive they are. I know some of my friends got into a ton of them, and other ones equally qualified didn’t. I only got into one REU at an alright school, though for grad school I got into a number of top 10 programs.</p>
<p>Your best resource might be talking to the professors that wrote your recommendations. They’ll know of people in your field, and if there’s someone worth working for better than anyone on here will.</p>
<p>I also guess the big difference between VT and UPenn is if you want to experience a different field of research. I worked in a ton of different kinds of labs as an undergrad because I wanted to experience all different subfields of my discipline. Some of my friends worked in the same lab all through undergrad and went to grad school in the same field. It’s really up to you.</p>