u/Diligent-Design1217

Hi,

I’m a junior mechanical engineering undergrad, and I’m taking this fall semester off to work at a large automotive company. My current role is in process engineering, focused on optimizing manufacturing processes. I've also had an internship this past summer in an manufacutring environment.

The same company has already offered me a position for next summer, but that role would be more design-focused, specifically designing fixtures. The issue is that I have to respond to the offer before I even start my current position, so I have to decide without knowing yet how much I’ll enjoy the company or the work.

I’ve also been considering grad school straight after undergrad, most likely a PhD, and I’m unsure how that should factor into my decision. I don’t have much research experience. The only research position I’ve had was during my fall semester of sophomore year and was mostly data analysis and training a ML model. However, I found the research interesting and would like to get more experience to see if research is something I could pursue long-term. I've tried reaching out to professors for the past semester or two without much success.

I’m particularly interested in computational mechanics (FEA, etc.), so I’m wondering whether getting research experience in that area would be more valuable for me, especially if I end up pursuing a PhD. I’ve already gotten a good amount of engineering experience and technical through extracurriculars and other projects, so I’m also unsure how much additional value this internship would add to my skillset.

Although the summer role would be more design-focused than my current position, it’s still in a manufacturing environment at the same company. Would two similar internships be less valuable than using the summer to gain research experience or explore computational mechanics?

I do like design, but I’m not particularly passionate about fixture design or manufacturing in general. At the same time, a guaranteed internship at a large automotive company seems like a good opportunity, especially since I don’t know how successful I’d be at finding a strong research position.

Another option is to accept the offer now and potentially renege if I later find a really good research opportunity. I’d prefer not to do that, but I also don’t want to turn down a good opportunity now based on the possibility that something better might come along.

What would you recommend?