Applying to Our Program

These are the steps necessary to apply to our program:

  • Read about this summer's projects to decide which interest you.
  • Find two faculty members who can write recommendation letters for you.
  • Write your CV and Personal statements (see below).
  • Have your Registrar send us your official transcript. Your transcript should be mailed to
    Melissa O'Neill, CS REU Director
    Computer Science Department
    Harvey Mudd College
    301 Platt Boulevard
    Claremont CA 91711-5901
    (Your transcript is the only aspect of your application that needs to be mailed. Everything else is dealt with electronically.)
  • Complete the electronic application form where you will be asked to submit your CV and Personal Statements as well as provide details about the projects you're interested in and your academic preparation.

Deadline

The deadline for everything to be in is Friday, March 14, 2008. When you submit your application, our system will send out email solicitations to your recommenders asking them to use our system to submit their recommendation letters, so you'll need to allocate time for them to do that, as well as time for your transcripts to arrive. For these reasons, you will almost certainly wish to submit your electronic application before the deadline.

Personal Statement

Your personal statement is an important part of your application. When you apply, you will need to submit your personal statement as a separate electronic document (acceptable file formats include PDF (.pdf), Plain Text (.txt), Open Document (.odt), and Microsoft Word (.doc). In this document, you should write a few paragraphs covering each of the following:

  • Why our REU program appeals to you.
  • A particularly exciting experience that you had in computer science (a course, a project, etc.).
  • Where you grew up, your background, and your aspirations.
  • What you like to do in your free time.

Your personal statement will probably be read by multiple people with different goals. Some people may be quickly scanning it to look for particular information about your interests, whereas other people may read the whole thing slowly and carefully. With that in mind, you should pay attention to structure of your document. For example, you may wish to make use of headings to separate sections of your document that talk about different things.

Similarly, you should pay attention to other aspects of readability. For example, if you use a document format that lets you specify the layout on the page (anything other than .txt), you should avoid very long lines and/or tiny fonts.