<p>I'm currently a sophomore and will be a junior next semester.
I plan on going to graduate school, preferably somewhere prestigious.</p>
<p>This summer (between soph and junior year), I might not have a job. I currently am working in a lab related to my major and have assisted with research projects and will coauthor in at least one publication. I planned on working there in the summer, but unfortunately, that will most likely not happen this summer, but I wasn't told this until a few weeks ago.
Now me and the professor are searching for an internship for me, but no luck as of yet. </p>
<p>I will have to take a couple classes this summer.</p>
<p>Would it look bad when I apply for graduate school if I spent a summer basically with no job?</p>
<p>Not only am I worried about that this might look bad, I really don't want to spend a summer doing practically nothing related to my major. The last second notice really screwed me over.</p>
<p>You might want to try asking other professors in your department if they have an opening. Something similar happened to me at one point, and I was lucky enough to be able to just move down the hall to join a different project.</p>
<p>Thanks. The problem is I’m majoring in mechanical engineering, but I am certain I want to pursue aerospace eng for grad school. My university doesn’t have an AE program, so it’s hard to get research experience in that field.
There are a few aerospace professors at in the ME department, but they’re not very open to having undergrads work for them.</p>
<p>Keep in mind there’s usually a lot of transferable skills even if you’re changing fields a bit. Thinking back to projects I did in undergrad there was solidification of steel slag under electric potentials, phase change propagation fronts in interstitial free steels, figuring out how to make nanopartciles, designing a method to prepare TEM samples, electrodepositing nanowires, and extensive analysis on a large quantity of grains in a material. None of them have anything directly related to do with my current PhD project, but at some point each has come in handy for helping me solve a problem that I’ve faced in the last few years.</p>
<p>Thanks I am still asking professors. There are only a few I can contact.
In the end I might just have to accept that I won’t be able to do anything in the summer.</p>
<p>If that does happen. How big of an impact do you think that would have on an application?</p>