<p>I'm an undergraduate (3rd year) applied physics student (nanoengineering/nanotechnology major) from Poland. I'm wondering if it's possible to apply to MIT for a summer internship in a laboratory. After the 3rd year we are encouraged to go abroad and see how the work is organized, to learn something practical etc. Last summer, for example, there were a few people who went to IMEC in Belgium (it's quite famous nano-center in Europe).</p>
<p>My major is mostly about solid state and semiconductor physics, quantum mechanics, a bit of fiber optics, spectroscopy and programming. Therefore I'd rather go somewhere where either production or research is done on various nanodevices, quantum wells, quantum dots, semiconductor lasers and so on. I'm not a paper-and-pencil theoretical type though. On the other hand, I'm keen on programming so it'd be nice to have some experimental work, maybe along with some coding.</p>
<p>I don't know if it matters but I'm pretty sure I could get quite nice references from my profs and my weighted GPA is around 4.8/5.5 which should place me #2-3 in my year. I already tried to get to MIT for undergraduate studies three years ago and I was deferred.</p>
<p>Do you think MIT could be a good choice for me? My academic year ends in June and starts again in October so I will have 3 months to do this, maybe a bit more. If not MIT, would you recommend somewhere else? It doesn't have to be an uni (e.g. IMEC isn't one) and it doesn't have to be in the US either.</p>
<p>Thanks itsme123! Don’t you think 6 weeks may be too little for a good internship? Assuming people need some training there before they can start research, there’s a risk that the fun starts when your’re about to leave… Anyway thank you for the link, I’ll look into it.</p>
<p>If you want an internship at MIT for the summer, you will need to contact a specific professor whose lab you are interested in working in. It’s certainly possible to work for the summer in an MIT lab if you don’t attend MIT, but this would be handled by the individual professor.</p>
<p>k4r3n2 and molliebatmit, thanks for your replies! Do you think I should contact the directors (for instance Dr. Mark Schattenburg if I was interested in working at [SNL](<a href=“http://snl.mit.edu/]SNL[/url]”>http://snl.mit.edu/)</a>) or rather search for people who are responsible for a specific project, let’s say “Nanofabricated Metal Transmission Gratings” @ SNL?</p>
<p>I doubt that I can tell if my skills are appropriate for a particular project, if they need people for summer internship etc. so maybe it’s better to write to directors as they would know better? On the other hand, I’m afraid they have a lot of “bigger” work to do so maybe I shouldn’t bother them with my letters?</p>
<p>I know I may be asking questions replies to which depend on circumstances but I just want to have a general idea. I guess that Mollie was referring to the directors of labs, right?</p>