<p>I am a junior in civil engineering. My goal is to get my masters and Ph.D after graduation. Should I only be doing research in summer? Or can I do internships as well. Because I really want to learn about it in a real job situation, but I'm afraid internship looks bad for graduate school application since it's different from research.</p>
<p>Could anyone give me some insights on this? Thanks!</p>
<p>Internships don't look bad. Most graduate schools understand that people don't come out of the womb knowing they want to do a PhD, so they explore a little bit. You should definitely explore and get some industry experience (especially since even if you do decide to get the PhD and complete it, you may want to do industry research instead of academia). You also learn what the real-world applications are for engineering research, so you can always parlay the internship that way.</p>
<p>I spent my first two summers in undergrad working to pay the bills as a summer camp counselor. I didn't do research until my third summer, although I was doing it during the school year (which you should also look into if you aren't already).</p>