From reseach internship to grad school

[Ai52487963]

Say one is accepted for a research internship at some university for the summer, be it an REU or whatever. How much better of a chance at going to that university for graduate studies does one have?

 

[eri]

From my own personal experience, not too much. I did an REU at Harvard-SAO which often felt like one big pitch for their grad program - but only one person from my REU program even got in, although all of us had glowing letters of recommendation from profs in the department.

 

[G01]

In my experience it did help.

Without my REU's I would have had no research experience, coming from a small liberal arts school. The REU's did not help me get into Harvard, but I did get into a respectable graduate program at a non-ivy league research university. Without the REU's I think the caliber of school I got into would be far less (i.e. a top ~80 instead of top ~30 institution)

 

[Bel_Oubli]

I think that in general, having research experience will help you get into graduate school. So, participating in any REU will increase your chances of being accepted. Even so, just because you participated in an REU at a particular college, it doesn't say anything about whether or not that college will accept you for graduate school. Being picked for an REU means that they were somewhat interested in your work, you were at the top of the list of people who applied, & you shared a similar research goal or interest with the person who picked you to work with them. Graduate admissions is a completely different process with different people in charge of accepting/rejecting applicants.

On that note, I know tons of people who completed REUs at top colleges, but when they went around to apply for graduate school, they did not get accepted. Conversely, I got rejected from an REU program at Lehigh University, but they emailed me and said it was just because they couldn't find a mentor whose interests matched mine. They still liked my work, and they encouraged me to apply for graduate school and even waived the admissions fee.