<p>Here's my situation right now. I recently went to my career fair as a Sophomore who will become a Junior this Fall. I was looking for an internship or co-op and had no prior internships or anything. I had a 3.76 GPA at the time and handed out 20+ copies of my resume at the career fair. I ended up getting two interviews, but no offers. A month later I received a message on my phone for an interview with a different company, but the interviewer never picked up her phone when I tried calling back on several occasions. It was my plan to do an internship for this summer, and then try a research position at my school the next summer to figure out if I would prefer entering the workforce after graduation or getting into grad school. Is there any feasible way to get a taste of both given that I will be a Junior after this summer? Also, if I happen to choose the grad school option, by when should all of my school applications be sent out?</p>
<p>I would aim for an internship next summer and then try to get a research position on campus next school year. I don’t know what your course load will be like but if you volunteer for 10 -20 hours a week, you’ll find a professor that will want to take you on.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t give up an internship position for undergraduate research unless you know you want to do grad school already, so to be honest your original plan was a bit flawed. Get into research during the semester.</p>
<p>With those stats, it leads me to believe either your resume is flawed or you are a bad interviewer if you didn’t get an internship. I would suggest going to your career center on campus and seeing if they can give you some pointers. Most of them have free resume critiquing and many also will give you mock interviews. That can help you improve for the next time you need to try and get an internship.</p>
<p>In the meantime, find a professor doing work that seems interesting to you and see if you can get into his lab as an assistant. You will likely get paid, which is just an added bonus because the experience is where the real value lies. You shouldn’t have a problem with a 3.76 since professors often tend to just look at your GPA and how you did in their class (if they taught one you were in) in making a decision.</p>
<p>Sorry for the delayed response, but thanks for the advice. I’m going to go check into my career center to get my resume critiqued and maybe do a few practice interviews. I’m also going to look around for any research assistant openings. By what time should all of my grad school applications be sent out should I choose to go that route?</p>
<p>Just one other thing that wasnt mentioned here is to take advantage of networking. If you know anyone who works at a company in your field, send them an email or give them a call and see if there are any internships available. I attended two career fairs and also used people I knew in the field. I had much better luck using networking. At the career fairs I passed out about 20-25 resumes and only heard back from 4. I talked to four people I knew in industry and was contacted for interviews for 3. I don’t know if you have thought of/done this already, but if not it is something worth trying.</p>
<p>You might have run into problems just due to your age - many companies only want Juniors, because Sophomores have not generally had enough coursework yet to be able to contribute.</p>
<p>If you are interested in grad school, I would definitely focus on research over internships - perhaps a summer REU and/or a year-long spot in a research lab at your school.</p>
<p>Grad school applications vary, but most have December deadlines. Plan on spending the summer after your junior year winnowing down the list, deciding where you will apply, and taking the GRE. Then try and spread the application workload (including wrangling LOR’s) during the semester, and then make sure you meet all the deadlines.</p>