So you got into an REU program – congrats! Now, what do you do? (1) celebrate and (2) plan. You should take the time to celebrate your achievement, especially since an REU is a huge stepping stone to grad school, admission is getting increasingly hard with every cycle, and this accomplishment speaks to where you have been and where you are going. But, I must admit that was probably the easiest part of your REU. While reflecting on my REU experience, I believe you could take two paths from here: the river or the mountain.
Path 1 entails flowing with the current and doing the work you’re assigned (aka your research project), attending lab meetings, and showing up to social events planned by the program. This path is straightforward. You do what is on your calendar - no more, no less. Of course, you will still hit the rocks and bumps that come with research, but ultimately, you will reach your goal. This isn’t necessarily wrong; it is still a great and above-average path as long as you do the work. However, you could do more to enrich your experience, build connections, and further your career.
Path 2 is what I call the Mountain. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and entails doing more than you are assigned. For starters, when you are heading into an REU program, you should aim to have a few goals:
These goals are not only yours, but the program and your PI should hold similar goals (while being aware of yours). During my REU at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (Summer ‘23), I had a wonderful REU mentor, Tricia Ngoon, Ph.D., and a lab who ensured I completed my goals. For example, my mentor started my REU by having me define an individual development plan with my initial interests, weekly goals, and work completed each week.
For example, here is an anonymized copy of my individual plan. Although it isn’t super long, it helped me keep track of my goals and ensured that I completed everything I wanted to week by week.
Having weekly goals can help keep you on track to make the most of my time at your REU site. For example, in my plan, you can see I had 2-3 “coffee chats” per week with a number of different faculty and PhD students. This time was crucial for me - it helped me decide that I was more interested in Electrical & Computer Engineering rather than Human-Computer Interaction research for my PhD. I met with various faculty in different CS departments @ CMU, faculty in the ECE department, and a wide variety of PhD students. This brings up another point – talking to the students is just as important as talking to faculty and staff at universities you are interested in attending (especially if you are considering grad school at that university). Students are often honest, direct, and very helpful when talking about their programs, departments, universities, non-work life, etc. – they were in your shoes once upon a time! They truly want to help and give you deeper insight to help you decide your career goals.
Whether you make a copy of the Google doc above, find an alternative on the internet, or prefer to write down your goals physically, defining and keeping track of your goals while you progress through your program is important. Time flies while you are doing research! I felt the REU started with lots of reading for a literature review, ramped up quickly to data annotations and building ML models, and before I knew it, it was time to compile and submit the poster for printing. Keeping track of your progress ensures you hit all your research, program, and individual targets while maximizing your experience to build your network and set you up for future success.
Since this is a blog post based on my personal experience, I want to include three examples of how going beyond expectations in my REU helped me in the future.
Items 1 and 2 kind of tie together - while talking to PhD students, I noticed how so many are involved in service roles (through the professional org, volunteering at conferences, mentorship roles in their department, etc. ) and found an opportunity to join the ACM XRDS Magazine as a Department Editor. Coincidentally, one of the PhD students I had met after applying was previously the Editor-in-Chief, and after briefly chatting, I realized how aligned our research was. They graduated and started a faculty position, so I applied to their school’s PhD program and was actually admitted with them as one of my co-advisors. While I ultimately took a different offer, this connection wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t met them during their PhD and my REU overlapping at the same university.
Item 3 I outlined in the ‘Mountain’ section - my REU mentor wrote me a letter of recommendation for my 2024 NSF GRFP application and helped with my PhD application letters. They could speak of my research work and potential, which greatly helped in addition to my other letters. If you are planning to get your PhD (or go to grad school), having a letter from someone you did research under is a fantastic and necessary part of the application.
If you take anything away from this blog post:
REU’s are a great space to decide between industry and academia, masters vs. PhD, and between different sub-fields. Best of luck at your REU!