<p>Hi y'all,</p>
<p>I'm an engineering student at a nearby college, and I'd like to do some kind of research at MIT over next summer. There are several groups I'd love to be a part of. My only concern is the general feeling that MIT research groups only take MIT students. Anyone have anything to say about this? My interests lie in EECS related fields, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and maybe some VLSI.</p>
<p>Thanks!
pinktowel</p>
<p>I don’t see the harm in emailing professors whose work you’re interested in to see if they have a position for you :)</p>
<p>I plan on doing that, but you never know what to expect with emails. It’s really easy for them to just ignore you. For example, I once tried emailing someone at Harvard, but they basically said “I’m busy right now, I’ll get back to you after Thanksgiving” and never did. </p>
<p>Also, is there any kind of program I can apply for? Usually these are more structured, so it’s easier to know what you need to do and what options are available. I know Caltech has something like this.</p>
<p>pinktowel</p>
<p>^ Emailing again after a few weeks is completely appropriate.</p>
<p>(I don’t know of any particular program, so I can’t answer your question there. But I still vote for sending out emails to many profs about your interest.)</p>
<p>I’ll do that in the next few days… hopefully things will go well. Any idea whether or not they’ll actually be interested or just pull the “we only hire from our own” line?</p>
<p>You might want to look at this:</p>
<p>[US</a> NSF - REU - Search for an REU Site](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.cfm]US”>Search for an REU Site | NSF - National Science Foundation)</p>
<p>It is a program at NSF that gives money specifically for
undergraduates to do research. Students can contact the
principle investigators directly, knowing that they want
to work with undergrads.</p>
<p>check out this site
[MIT</a> ODGE: Undergraduate outreach](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/odge/undergraduate/index.html]MIT”>http://web.mit.edu/odge/undergraduate/index.html)
There are some links for research specifically for non-mit undergrads</p>
<p>The link you posted above has programs that are just about biology related fields, which I’m not interested in. </p>
<p>I’ve been looking at CSAIL, and some of the projects are really interesting. But I can’t find any place where they say they’ll take people on for internships. I’ve tried contacting some of the professors, but I have no responses. Any ideas?</p>
<p>pinktowel</p>