<p>Hey guys, haven't posted for a while but I hope to get some insightful contribution here.</p>
<p>I just finished off my junior year as a EE major at an engineering school in NY and after a handful of unsuccessful interviews with big companies, I decided to apply to my schools summer research program and successfully got it. This research opportunity is, however, about a biped walking robot and is being conducted by a professor from the mechanical department. After speaking to him, I learned that working with him will help me gain proficiency in Arduino among other programming related things. This opportunity is paid (around 3000ish total) and I also assume it will be a plus for graduate school as well. </p>
<p>However, just weeks following my acceptance to the program, I was called back by a consulting real estate engineering firm in NYC for a summer position as an energy engineer. My work will involve support for retro commissioning and energy audits. After interviewing with the firm, I assumed most of the work will be on excel as they insisted on my ability to use excel. I was really excited for it only to find out that the position was unpaid. </p>
<p>Now my thoughts are all over the place and have until Tuesday to decide whether to accept the offer or not. Just for the info, my gpa can be considered good but most of my work experience has been in school (tutoring...) and I believe this summer internship is my last chance of gaining practicality in the real world (office work experience...). However I am looking to go into industry and I feel like taking the unpaid position would look better on my resume than a research position. Nevertheless this position is not remunerated as opposed to the research opportunity, therefore here I am now torn between real world experience+not much and research+money.</p>
<p>I am therefore trying to gather opinions to help me in my decision.</p>
<p>Most companies will be almost as happy with solid research experience as they are with an internship, especially if you can continue during the school year. Also, an internship that primarily uses excel is not one that I would normally value very highly. Ignoring the money, I would say that the research opportunity looks better educationally AND professionally.</p>
<p>Still, the money is a big issue, and you have not addressed your means. Personally, I would take the research in a heartbeat simply because my college career has never had periods where I could afford to work for free. So not knowing your means, I would STILL recommend the research.</p>
<p>You have not mentioned your area of interest in EE other than to use “however” in describing the research area and “excited” to describe the internship. If this is really how you feel, then that tips the scales more in favor of the internship… if you can afford it. And if you are dead set against grad school and can afford to forgo the cash, the internship is fine. You will not learn as much, but it will be in your preferred specialty, it will be an easy bullet point on your resume, and it will make it easier to get interviews. Just bear in mind that during your interviews they will ask questions about what you did and what you learned, and the internship does not sound like it will give you much to discuss.</p>
<p>Thank you cosmicfish for your reply. My main area of interest is energy production and the internship description was what I was looking for. My assumption about the excel work was mainly due to the repetitive questions regarding the matter. I guess I will get to learn some aspects of an energy engineer’s job to a certain extent. </p>
<p>Taking the research job might give me extra programming skills among others but my concern is that it is not very relevant to the energy sector. (or at least from what I know).</p>
<p>I’m curious as to how electrical engineering relates to energy production… There seems to be only a tenuous connection.</p>
<p>Honestly, the research job sounds much more “high-level,” and seems like it will actually teach you cutting edge skills as opposed to low-level grunt work.
Keep in mind that you can have your professor as a reference or have him write recommendations for you.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that when you’re being interviewed for a full-time job you will probably have more interesting things to say about the research than about the internship.</p>
<p>When I say energy production I mean sustainable and renewable energy… There is no doubt in my mind that I will gain more skills doing research and lab work. However, I am just not sure how employers will perceive someone who only has school related work experience. I got asked a couple of times if I ever had office work experience and felt like my negative response did not favor me.</p>
o_O I’m completely confused by this statement… I’m co-op’ing with an electric utility right now, and can absolutely guarantee you that ee most certainly relates to energy procurement and production. Especially in areas of renewables.<br>
So am I just reading this wrong?</p>
<p>To the OP - you said you want to go into industry, and from a student perspective, having industry/consulting internship experience was probably what got me my co-op. However, that being said, “industry” is a very broad term. Do you want to go into very technical industry, or something not as technical? </p>
<p>In other words, would the technical experience help you in the real world at all? In my situation, I’ll never use programming in my career as an ee, so it would be a bit useless. But only you know exactly what you want to get into, so the decision might not be the same for you.</p>
<p>But as others have said… question 1 is really “can you afford it?”</p>
<p>If you’re going to grad school, research for sure. If not, still most likely the research unless you have some pretty good reason to believe it wouldn’t be of enough use.</p>
<p>NeoDymium & Johnson181 thanks for the input. To answer your question, yes I believe I can afford to go unpaid this summer. By industry I mean utilities/renewables. I just am at this stage where I believe doing research can be beneficial only in academia because of the kind of companies I’m targeting.</p>
<p>Go for the research, GO FOR THE RESEARCH!!! :-D</p>
<p>Quite odd that the engineering internship is unpaid. Usually the engineering internships pay more than the research positions! I don’t think you’re missing much, doesn’t sound like a very worthwhile internship if it’s so low-level that they aren’t paying you.</p>
<p>Thank you guys - I think I’m all set on taking the paid research job. I believe my early failure of getting an internship shouldn’t justify me working for free as an engineer, especially when I have worked hard enough in school (I have a 3.6+ GPA).</p>
<p>This is bittersweet, I am taking a huge risk as I am now going to finish undergrad without any professional experience. I wonder how I am going to secure a job like this. Maybe going for a master will probably be the best alternative but then again, anybody know how much the lack of internships would affect me for admission to a terminal master degree (I know research does not help all too much in this case)?</p>
<p>If it makes you feel any better, companies and colleges now start to be more wary of the more meaningless internships. This unpaid one seems like it could be just that.</p>
<p>In engineering, there is no taboo over a terminal masters like there is in some other areas. I wouldn’t worry about your chances for getting into a masters program. But if you don’t have professional experience then you need to have <em>something</em> to show that you worked on, to show that you can be an engineer and make something. This research position could be it, or you could join an engineering team at your school (my school has a few car-design ones, some software development groups, an aerial robotics group, etc.).</p>
<p>Thank you so much guys, your advice and opinions were much appreciated. I have finally rejected the offer. I am meeting up with the professor who hired me for the research job tomorrow. I’m just going to give my all and learn as much as possible. </p>
<p>I guess I got to look past me not being able to get any internships and turn my focus around now. Maybe good LORs will help down the road. In the meantime, I will also get started on the GRE prep just in case.</p>
<p>After several months of searching, I was able to secure a paid part time internship this fall with a wireless network company in NYC. It is not originally what I was looking for (remember I mentioned that I was interested in Energy Production. I would like to thank all of you awesome people for caring to provide inputs.</p>
<p>Good. I’m really tired of “for profit” companies doing unpaid internships. They should at least pay minimum wage. If they feel the work you do is not even worth that then it’s probably not worth doing at all.</p>
<p>The problem is that for every person willing to refuse an unpaid internship at a for-profit company, there are 5 people willing to take that internship. Thus, the job market does not require them to pay you.</p>