What Are the Best REU Opportunities to Explore This Summer?

[Monocles]

Yeah - I'm a Georgia Tech student and they explicitly require a GT professor's letter of recommendation to even apply so its a pretty easy program for GT students to get into and pretty difficult for everyone else. I pulled off something crazy and got them to agree to let me work with a mathematical physicist at another university (with GT's funding), and that school has several professors I'd be interested in working with as a grad student (including the one I'll be working for), so I'm pretty stoked about this :D

 

[kate1729]

Has anybody received an acceptance from WPI? Moreover, I wonder why there has been no discussion about the MSRI-UP program. If anybody has applied please tell me the status of your application.

I got an offer from WPI on Friday.

 

[bksmith3]

I got offers from NC State and Georgia Tech today

 

[Cider]

Indiana sent out all of its rejections just now.

 

[Galois1]

Anybody heard from Kent State yet?

 

[dhornbeck]

they are sending out their first offers at the beginning of next week, and then things will go from there

 

[shravas]

Does anyone know of any summer school-type things like the one at Princeton (http://www.math.princeton.edu/rtg/summer/)? I'm not really sure where to look for them.

 

[Galois1]

they are sending out their first offers at the beginning of next week, and then things will go from there

Was that in response to the question regarding Kent State?

 

[dhornbeck]

yeah, they e-mailed me about it last week

 

[riemannia]

I've been rejected by eight of the nine REU's I've applied to, with little hope for an acceptance by the remaining one; so I'm sort of a scrambling to get something set up to do over the summer. ebola1717's question was ignored a page or so back, so I'll ask it again: in the absence of an REU to attend, what should a math undergrad student do with his or her summer?

Obviously, study more math (I've already got a hefty reading list and a stack of Putnam problems to play with) but I'm looking for something more.

 

[Cider]

I'd say try to talk to some of the professors you know about possibly getting something to do over the summer or if they know anyone that you would be able to do research under, at your University or elsewhere. That's what I'm planning to do should I have the same situation, though I've only been rejected at 3 of 10 so far (most were later deadlines).

 

[zpconn]

Some ideas for stuff to do over the summer:

* Travel! Seriously--it may not leave a lot of time to dedicate to mathematics, but studying abroad can be really fun and educational and worthwhile. At my school at least, right now I'm pretty sure if you personally went to the study abroad people you could get permission still to go somewhere this summer. One problem could be financing. It basically works differently at every school, and sometimes financial aid covers studying abroad and sometimes it doesn't.

* Learn about something cool and exotic in math, write an expository paper on it, and try to get that published (in, say, the Harvard College Mathematics Review, which only wants expository articles).

* Take classes, either math classes (probably advanced ones won't be offered) or other degree requirements.