Advice for Pursuing career in CS research /u/BigStatistician4166 CSCQ protests reddit

Hi, I’m a junior on break trying to plan out my future path post graduation.

I did a quant internship sophomore year (relatively unknown place) and got a return offer. For Junior summer I have an offer from MIT Lincoln Labs.

I know I want to pursue a career in CS research. I likely want a PhD at some point in AI security realm.

I felt like i was getting pulled in a lot of different directions the first 2 years of college between job applying, working on 2 research projects, and classes so I am not close to having any publications yet. I do go to a T10 and have a good gpa (3.86) though.

I probably won’t be ready to apply direct to PhD (ideally want to get into a T10) so I have two options:

1. Should I take an extra year and do a masters specifically to get more research experience? I can technically do it within my undergrad (as I was alr accepted into accelerated masters) just it would be a lot of classes.

2. I could also work at Lincoln Labs for a couple years and then apply for PhD but no clue if PhD programs would value that.

3. I’m a little worried about the job market rn based on posts here so should I continue to leetcode / interview prep to try and get a research related swe position at a large company? Or should I just stick with what I have?

Hi, I’m a junior on break trying to plan out my future path post graduation.

I did a quant internship sophomore year (relatively unknown place) and got a return offer. For Junior summer I have an offer from MIT Lincoln Labs.

I know I want to pursue a career in CS research. I likely want a PhD at some point in AI security realm.

I felt like i was getting pulled in a lot of different directions the first 2 years of college between job applying, working on 2 research projects, and classes so I am not close to having any publications yet. I do go to a T10 and have a good gpa (3.86) though.

I probably won’t be ready to apply direct to PhD (ideally want to get into a T10) so I have two options:

1. Should I take an extra year and do a masters specifically to get more research experience? I can technically do it within my undergrad (as I was alr accepted into accelerated masters) just it would be a lot of classes.

2. I could also work at Lincoln Labs for a couple years and then apply for PhD but no clue if PhD programs would value that.

3. I’m a little worried about the job market rn based on posts here so should I continue to leetcode / interview prep to try and get a research related swe position at a large company? Or should I just stick with what I have?