Will doing research at Columbia boost my chances?

jg18
Sun, 16 Apr 2017 20:13:22 +0000

Hey guys! I’ve been fortunate enough to land an internship conducting research with a PhD student (soon to be postdoc) this summer at Columbia University. The work will be rigorous (6 weeks full-time, reading up on the latest literature, doing lots of math and coding) and will likely end in publishing an article to a public interest journal. I’m really excited to be doing all of this, but do you think that this is a summertime activity that is meaningful and interesting enough to Columbia (it’s my dream school, I love the atmosphere, I love the Core, etc.) to significantly boost my chances? My stats and activities are very strong and quite unique as well, but I’m hoping that this might be something that makes me “get lucky” and get in. Obviously this isn’t going to change my decision on what I’m going to be doing this summer, but I’m just curious to know what you guys think.
TLDR; - read the title
Thoughts are appreciated, thanks!