<p>Hi! I'm a Junior in MechE with a minor in project management and I'm thinking about going to Graduate school. I have a 3.9 GPA and I'll have two summer internship experiences by the time I apply next year. I did an internship at NASA this past summer, and I just accepted one at GE for next summer. I'm also an undergraduate TA/TF for an engineering class if that counts for anything.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don't have any long-term research experiences on-campus.. and as a result zero glowing recommendations I can ask for. I feel like LORs mean more than anything else for top grad school admissions when the majority of applicants have great GRE scores/GPAs/etc
I'm wondering, do top graduate programs accept reccs from mentors from summer internships off-campus? I'm under the impression that they only want to hear from other professors.</p>
<p>I've found a lab on-campus that I'm really interested in and I'll be speaking to a professor soon, but this lab hardly hires undergraduates unless they're BS/MS candidates. I'd really like to get my MS at a different school, and not try to rush my BS/MS in 5 years.
If this professor doesn't want to hire me then I don't know what to do. I'd rather not try to push myself into any lab just for the sake of getting lab experience and nice recommendations.
I'm nearly halfway into Junior year already; is it too late to be looking for research experience? Should I give up on mech E grad school (my absolute dream school is MIT.. it sounds like an incredible place to learn but it's also an impossibly far stretch) and go straight to industry?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>