Getting Experience

Why Do I Need Experience?

Whether you’re planning to go directly into the job market, onto higher education, or into medical school getting experience in your field can improve your chances of succeeding.

Participating in a research assistantship or internship can also help you explore different areas of interests and give you a better idea of what you might want out of your career.

Finally, these experiences can also help you network with people in your field and may lead to more opportunities in the future.

Internship vs. Research Assistantship

Are you wondering if you should do an internship or a research assistantship? It truly depends on what you want to do after graduation. While everyone will gain some benefit from either type of experience, students planning on going into:

  • The workforce should focus on seeking out internships
  • Higher education (MS, PhD, MD, etc) should focus on seeking out research experiences
A canal full of water between two buildings with bridges in the background.

Engineering Around the Globe

Get Experience Abroad

There are plenty of opportunities to get experience while studying abroad. You can:

Interested in going abroad? Talk to your advisor early to see how studying abroad can fit into your course plan.

Experience in the Curriculum

Our Senior Design Program ensures that all our students get real, practical experience before graduation. In this program seniors work with sponsor organizations to develop prototypes of medical devices or research instruments. Over their senior year, students will create a proposal, develop prototype, client reviews, and testing, before finally presenting their project on Design Day. Several student senior design projects have resulted in patents or start-up companies.