Anybody do REU's in college?

[tatteredpotato]

I'm in my second year of studying Electrical Engineering right now and really would like to have some sort of internship or REU this summer. Right now I'm thinking that I'm going to want to go onto graduate school, so REUs seem like a better option than internships right now.

My only problem is that I'm feeling kind of lost looking for programs to apply to. Is there any aggregator for this kind of information? Also any personal experience with programs would be greatly helpful.

 

[jagec]

They didn't call it that, just "undergraduate research", but yes.

What you end up doing and how much responsibility you have really depends on the prof, so your best bet is to talk to them, and talk to their students who've done research with them.

 

[deejayshakur]

my experience is limited to the life sciences so take it with a grain of salt.

basically, look up your grad school faculty, see what interests you, and shoot out 5-10 e-mails. see what responses you get. rinse and repeat if necessary.

 

[SampSon]

I did a fellowship type program with Brookhaven National Laboratories during undergrad. The bulk of the program actually ran during a
nomal semester and most schools gave you a full semester of credits for doing it. The program included a weekly stipend and housing (which was actually included in the stipend, meaning you could get more money if you did not use their housing).

The whole experience was very good. I learned a bunch, mostly about how much bureaucracy truely runs science. Living on a Govt. Lab site was umm, interesting, to say the least. Inside there were the hardest of the hardcore science nerds. They live for very little except their studies. Most of them figured out that showering, eating, cleaning their clothes, and communicating really just cut into their research time.

I don't know if they run that particular program anymore and I can't even remember what it was called. It was some acronym that has probably been changed a hundred times.

A quick search of BNL pulled up:
This link
You should be able to browse through all the programs they offer for what you're looking for.

IIRC Catherine Osiecki was the woman in charge of most of these programs directed at students. Look at the site and get ahold of her. Beware, she can be a total bitch.