Do graduate schools look favorably upon published research?

[astroman707]

Do graduate schools in physics look more favorably upon undergraduate students with published research, rather than just research experience?
How would an admissions committee weigh two students if one had done published research, but not in the field of physics of which he was applying for, and the other had done research in the desired field, but had not been published.

 

[mfb]

That will depend on the publication and the research of the other person. A publication is certainly better than no publication if everything else is equal, but relevant research experience is interesting as well.

 

[Choppy]

A lot can depend on what's said in the reference letters. When the referee is able to point to specific accomplishments and demonstrations of initiative, that can weigh very favourably for the student.

You want to have your referees saying things like: 'this student wrote a code to analyze our data making these specific improvements over our previous approach,' or 'the student was able to measure something or solve a problem that my current graduate students had not been able to.' You don't want them saying things like: 'The student attended all required hours in the lab and thus was included as an author on work that was done during those times.'

It's also important to remember there's no specific formula. Publications are great because they're tangible and easy to quantify. But people on admissions committees know that not every research experience is going to lead to a publication before grad school applications are due, and not every student will have the opportunity to get involved in research in the student's first choice of field, and not every student even knows what it is he or she wants to study from day one, and sometimes research experiences aren't all that positive.