Are REUs too hard for foreigners to get into?

[Rono]

I've looked up for how REUs are and most of them have a work lapse between May-August or June-August (my semester ends up to July), also lots of them have finance only for U.S. citizens. I can still do research job in my university and I don't want to lose any semester, but I guess it would put me in disadvantage for the future for graduate admissions as not having research experience outside of the projects my university (small physics faculty) has.

Any opinions about my situation?

 

[Lavabug]

Yes, very hard if not impossible to get funding if it's from the NSF. And the start-end dates are not flexible in general.

Montana State University has taken some summer students from Europe before but I believe they were funded via the department, not NSF grants which generally require US citizenship.

Any research experience is better than none. I wouldn't worry about only having done some at your university, you're already at an advantage compared to many. Look for other summer research in Europe like CERN's, ESA's, etc. in the coming years.

 

[lasymphonie]

Some REUs take international students, but they have a very small number of places open to international students and as there are so few programs open to international students, they can become ridiculously competitive.

Are you in a major city? If so, can you contact professors from other universities to work with them? If you're interested in computational work, could you work remotely and volunteer your work to professors?

 

[Rono]

Actually I'm in the only university with a degree in physics here, but it's not the only university (nor instituion) that needs physicsts. As physics is quite underrated in both industry and academia, it wouldn't be much of a problem to get research experience in my university, but I still consider doing jobs in a not-known university for physics (it may be for other sciences, but not for physics) may not be the best curriculum I could get.