What is an REU anyway?

I was first introduced to the idea of REU through a professor of mine at UWM, Christine Cheng.  As an undergraduate looking to prepare for graduate school, I would often ask professors and graduate students for advice on what I can do to prepare and how I should go about the whole process.

I was, and still am, going for my Computer Engineering bachelors, looking to do my graduate studies in Computer Science.  I approached professor Cheng regarding a double major, but once I was in touch with her, the conversation could not help but go in the direction of preparation for graduate school.

Among the numerous pieces of advice she gave me, one was to attend an REU.  Of course, I had never heard of such a thing, but the idea sounded great: an NSF funded program that will pay you to do research for the summer.  After that, I found out that a few friends of mine had done such programs and recommended it highly.

After some research, this is what I found:  A Research Experience of Undergraduates (REU), is a program that is funded by the Nastional Science Foundation. In their own words, and REU "supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation".  Luckily for me, Computer Science is one of them.

There are several universities across the country that offer these summer programs, ranging usually from 7 to 10 weeks.  The student is provided housing, given a food stipend, and paid a about $5000.  In return, the student works about 40 hours a week on a research project.  Normally they will accept only 10 students into a program, working in pairs under a certain professor.  Additionally, the program may hold other bonding activities.  Depending on the program, a sample schedule my be provided.  Although most programs start in June, the application deadlines start as much as six months before.

So the next thing for me to do was to apply ...