Why is undergraduate research so important?

intparent
Thu, 24 Sep 2015 00:20:16 +0000

The non-UA people will find your question anyway. :). Certainly it is more important for students going to grad school. Finding out if you even like research, building experience in it, maybe starting to build your CV and even get conference presentation or publication experience is all helpful in grad school admissions. It can also give some experience that helps a student refine their area of interest for grad school. I will add that not all students going to grad school, even for PhDs, are headed to academia. For example, try to get a physics position at Livermore Lab without a PhD…

Sometimes it can help with employment. One of my kids did summer CS research on magnetic storage efficiency. It helped her wrangle a couple interviews with Silicon Valley companies in the data storage field.