Should I do the REU or the internship?

ItsJustSchool
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 01:16:02 +0000

The REU is reliable/predictable that you will further your exploration of CS. The industrial internship could be thrilling and amazing, or (more likely), you will be given an assignment doing a small piece of boringness that you can’t possibly mess up, and then given a bit more, until by the end of the summer you are trusted enough to do something substantive and interesting- but now you are leaving. Or, you could end up stapling papers and looking over other peoples’ code.

Supervising interns is a very time-intensive job. Doing an REU with grad students and professors is more in your element- they are used to working with students like you.

Part of an internship is an initiation to how a business day/week/month and project is managed and run. It could be much more valuable than the REU if properly done.

The safer bet, if you want to further your CS knowledge and practice, is the REU. If you know something about the Internship that indicates that it could be amazing (not just the name of the company, but someone who has worked with these very people doing an internship in the past), it could be great. Coming out of Freshman year, I would bet on the REU this year.