Summer Work to Boost Your Physics Resume for Graduate School

[zheng89120]

So as the title stated, what kind of summer work would be good to put on one's resume, for helping an undergraduate to get into a good physics graduate program?

It feels like awards such as REU and NSERC are usually rewarded to the top standing students, and hence are not overly easy to get, by the merit of one's grades, unless there are some other ways to get them..

 

[Choppy]

You don't necessarily need to get an official REU or NSERC scholarship in order to get a summer research assistant position. Lots of professors will have funding to take on summer students and many universities or academic departments will have sources of internal funding for such things. It pays to ask around and see what's out there.

Other options include:
- summer teaching positions,
- leading summer science camps,
- demonstrating at local science centres,
- revamping undergraduate labs.

Or you could try thinking outside the box. What about writing a science column or blog for a local paper? Or what about joining the military reserves?