Junior Year - University Of New Mexico: Fill & Download for Free

Contact the University of New Mexico, School of Physics. Ask to talk to a professor who is working on high energy physics with Sandia National Laboratories.The University of New Mexico, school of physicsParticle PhysicsUniversity of New Mexico, Grant'sSandia National Laboratories, HEPStudents in engineering and physics often intern on Grant's and Sandia physics programs.The minimum GPA to intern at Sandia is 3.33. Intern pay is between $12 and $30 per hour, depending on many factors.Usually at the beginning of your junior year, internships are fairly easy to get. But, you need to know someone in Sandia to get a referral for Sandia internships.Start as soon as practical to work with Sandia related professors on campus. Being their teachers assistant (TA), spending intelligent time with them during their office hours, getting great grades.Get to know all of the physics programs at Sandia, so you can intelligently contribute in related conversations. And get to know the professors and grad students working on those projects.UNM has its own small particle accelerator.Always participate in influential study groups.After graduating with a BS, Sandia will pay for all tuition, books, fees, and living expenses to finish your Master's Degree in one year. Highly recommend choosing a thesis to defend, that can reasonably be completed in that time. Professirs are extremely helpful. And to take all graduate program prerequisites and a few of the required graduate classes before accepting Sandia's offer. Masters programs are typically 2 to 3 year commitments. But somehow many students succeed in one year.Just some insightThe same I am guessing, pretty much applies to Stanford University and the SLAC linear accelerator.

The European higher education system is guided by the Bologna Process. See The Bologna Process - Towards the European Higher Education Area, How does the Bologna Process work?, European Higher Education Area website 2010-2020| EHEA, and Bologna Process.The normative length for 3 degree cycles are: 3 years Bachelors degree, 2 years Masters degree, and 3-5 years Ph.D. degree (in some European countries. They may limit funding for Ph.D. programs to 3 years due to national/European financial/economic crisis). In the U.S., graduate degree programs may not have time limits, but some Ph.D. programs may have time limits due to funding issues and practicality; ie., if you take 10 years off your Ph.D. program, is your former research still cutting edge? However, some professors at certain graduate programs (e.g., engineering and computer science professors at Berkeley and Stanford) may allow their students to take an indefinite leave from their Ph.D. programs to go and create start-ups, and return whenever they want to.In graduate programs (U.S. definition) for Masters and Ph.D. programs, you tend to find a smaller number of graduate classes at good European research universities in comparison to good/"good" American research universities; they also tend to be limited in range due to the smaller size of the faculties. At good American research universities, you will find advanced graduate classes (not available in Europe) that train you to pick up skills and knowledge in special topics that tend to be in high demand in industry, government, or academia. This is especially true for graduate programs in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS). Note that these classes are not seminar classes. They are normal classes that include midterms (mid-semester exams), finals (final semester exams), assignments/homework, and class projects (e.g., 1-4 projects per class). This is because the graduate programs in Europe tend not to have a lot of graduate students, especially at the Ph.D. level who want to take these classes on top of their research.The workload and expectations/demands are far higher in certain challenging graduate classes at American research universities than European research universities, but are otherwise comparable. This is because the U.S. grading system demands a normative 90% to get an "A" grade and a normative "B" grade, which is typically considered as the "passing" grade and grad students need a 3.0 (B average) to graduate and avoid academic probation/suspension. This is especially true in EECS, since your circuit, software, or system either works according to the requirements/specifications or it does not. The circuit, software, or system that we develop for class projects can be so complicated that it is often impossible to determine if they are 100% (or even 75%) correct and functionally working. There are usually conditions, cases, and inputs that we can't consider due to the lack of time. Also, all projects (it can be a semester-long project, or be constrained to 1-4 weeks) and assignments (typically 1-2 weeks) have tight deadlines, and need to be completed within the semester. Failure to turn in projects and assignments on time can lead to a drop in the letter grade (deduction in your grade), or pay a hard penalty of 0% earned for that assignment/project. Failure to turn in all, or the minimum required number of, projects/assignments can lead to an incomplete. So, even if you will earn 0% for that assignment, you may still want to do a good job on that and turn it in... In Europe, the time limits and deadlines for assignments and projects can be a lot more flexible. Also, in Europe, you can take oral finals (in certain cases, repeatedly, till you get a good grade), which you usually can't in the U.S..In the U.S., graduate students, especially EECS grad students, get exposed to what is happening in other research universities and in industry far more than their peers in Europe. This is because when you take a class that is offered in less than 5 research universities worldwide, you will be searching the Web for any resource that is relevant to the problem(s) that you face in your class assignment/project. You will out what other departments are doing via their class web pages and research group web pages, as well as talks by faculty at other universities and prospective faculty members at your university. Industry researchers tend to visit U.S. research universities far more, since there are more and better corporate research labs in the U.S. than in Europe. Since there are more high-tech firms in the U.S., science and engineering students tend to have better job and internship opportunities in the U.S. than in Europe.Personally, I have been flown to the Silicon Valley multiple times for interviews (and subsequently back to Los Angeles), and they may put you up in a decent hotel for a night in the Silicon Valley before your interview, and drive you to the R&D/research center in a limousine. All expenses, including your meals, tend to be paid for. You probably can't beat that in many parts of Europe.In the U.S., there is stronger and better collaboration between government, academia, and industry, even though the European Union (EU) funds a lot of science and engineering (STEM) projects via the EU Framework X (where "X" is a number, such as EU Framework 7 program) program. This is because the graduate programs are far superior, with respect to coursework and research among many other things. Also, U.S. research universities tend to be better funded and have far larger endowments than European research universities. This means more scholarships for students in the U.S. than in Europe.Compared to European universities, U.S. research universities also tend to have far superior student support services, including those for international students, to help them grow personally and professionally, explore non-traditional Ph.D. careers (outside of academia and industrial/corporate research), interact with other students in various activities (from scuba diving to mountain hiking), and compete with other world-class athletes (NCAA allows students to compete for 4 years, and practice for 5 years) -- you definitely will be hard pressed to find this in Europe. There are also many highly-enriching cultural activities that allow you to meet celebrities, policymakers, and political figures that you can't in Europe. They also have programs, or even classes, that prepare you for teaching careers or hone your teaching skills in higher education. For example, at the University of New Mexico, science and engineering Ph.D. students are expected to teach a class, which can be interdisciplinary. E.g., see UNM Computer Science. There were also a couple of Ph.D. students from different departments (e.g., biology and computer science) who got together to create a class on "complex systems."Also, since U.S. Ph.D. programs tend to have breadth and depth requirements while European Ph.D. programs tend to have only depth requirements, U.S. Ph.D. graduates tend to be better prepared for careers in academia and research, as they have enough breadth in their skill set to teach undergraduate classes outside of their primary research area and take on interdisciplinary (or highly intradisciplinary - involving multiple research areas of an academic field) research problems. For R&D positions, such as those in niche software development (e.g., in embedded computer vision) or integrated circuit design roles and computer architecture (e.g., microarchitect or network-on-chip design), interview questions are usually technical and cover the same scope as questions in breadth and depth requirements faced by U.S. Ph.D. students.Also, see Pasquale Ferrara's answer to When recruiting Software Engineer/Computer Science majors for US companies, what international universities are on par with MIT/Stanford? and Pasquale Ferrara's answer to Which university is best to recruit computer science majors from and why?.While the advantages and opportunities in U.S. graduate programs are huge, the disadvantages are also highly apparent. Ph.D. students are expected to publish more, and tend to take a longer time to graduate (easily from 4 to 8/9 years, depending on the program/major). The three major milestones (breath and depth requirements, and oral defense of your dissertation) can be highly stressful. Couple these with worries/problems about getting funded or losing your funding support, tough academic requirements for your coursework, especially in EECS, finding a job post-Ph.D., among other things, going to Europe can be less stressful... Especially if you know a non-English European language, such as German, French, or otherwise. I am assuming that common issues, such as roommate conflicts and other housing problems, dating challenges, and what not will exist on both sides of the Atlantic.A key point for prospective EECS grad students to consider.Professors in Europe expect students to have the necessary background from their Masters degree programs, which may include a semester-long project, research project/thesis requirement, or internship. However, if your Ph.D. research is interdisciplinary, tough luck. Sooner or later, you will run into problems as you lack advanced knowledge of your research problem/topic, and will probably need a proper class to help you learn that material. The common way for Europe-based Ph.D. students to learn new material in some fields, such as computer science or computer engineering, is via "summer schools." These summer schools are typically a series of lectures organized in a week-long program, or at least 2-3 days, at a university or nice resort. Typically, you can't grasp material in such summer schools to a good extent such that you can implement them immediately when you get back to your research labs. You would need more independent learning to figure things out. On the other hand, the U.S. graduate classes would have covered adequate material for you to get moving on your research projects.For many graduate programs in the U.S., especially those outside of EECS, they tend not to have that many graduate classes, let alone advanced graduate classes. So, not having these advanced classes is okay -- with respect to your competition/peers, since you do not lose out that much. However, for EECS grad students, if you want an R&D internship (which are different from research internships), you would/may need the advanced classes to pick up advanced skills to secure that R&D engineering or software development internship. Once again, it depends on what you want to work on or do research about. Generic VLSI design positions may not require advanced skills, but that R&D internships in high-speed (100 GHz) interconnect design or embedded computer vision will. Research internships tend to be reserved for outstanding Ph.D. students who have already been publishing research papers, including conference papers; in EECS, conference papers are research publications, since they tend to vary from 4-12 pages, and include figures, tables, a reference list, algorithms, equations, and what not.Why do I harp so much about this? Well, if you take a class that includes 1 big project or 2-4 projects that are similar to what you may do in industry as a junior R&D engineer on a cutting-edge engineering/computing problem, you would have picked up a lot of industry-grade R&D skills using industrial tools (e.g., commercial electronic design automation tools). If that class is in, or related to, your research area, you would have enhanced your skill set for carrying out research in your chosen research topic. You would be more productive, and would spend less time learn all of that stuff on your own. Yes, labmates and your advisor can help you, but you would have lots to pick up on your own in your own free time. This is especially the case for EECS students who have never studied in a good EECS (undergrad/graduate) program in the U.S.. Ultimately, this affects your ability to carry out transformative research during your Ph.D. program, or even as a postdoc subsequently.See What are the pros and cons of doing a PhD from Europe?, Graduate School, EECS (ECE + CS), and Research Process.