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Hi everyone! I'm a college senior who recently finished submitting all my PhD applications. I'm still not sure if I'm going to enroll next year, since I also applied to RA positions and might do that instead, depending on how the next few months go. But in the case that I do start a PhD program next year, I'd like to know, what do people typically do in the months between finishing undergrad and starting grad school? I want to do something other than sit at home, but I feel like summer internship programs are mostly targeted toward sophomores/juniors (and I missed all the deadlines afaik). I could also stay around campus and try to work for a professor (which is my backup plan) but I'm wondering if there are other opportunities I don't know about.

Hi, Has anyone ever approached a professor with the intent to join in on research without having taken that professor's class or been formally introduced to him/her before? I was thinking of e-mailing a professor at a neighboring institution with research interests in line with mine about summer research. I've never met this person before, so I don't really know if this sort of "cold call" approach is appropriate. I won't forget to mention that I'll do the work for free. Does anyone have any experience with this?

I'm currently working at an economics consulting firm doing antitrust work, having graduated from college a few years ago. In college, although I double majored in economics and political science, I focused mostly on poli sci. I TAed for a few economics classes, but my research was with a political science professor. My job involves a decent amount of Stata programming, but I don't think I have had the type of research experience that grad programs in Economics are looking for. I am applying to PhD programs and MA programs in England and Canada, and I have two LORs from Econ professors and 1 from the Political Science professor I worked with (the project was not data intensive or policy oriented). I doubt that I will get into the PhD programs, so what most likely will happen is that I do a 1 yr masters. Because it will only be a year, I still will need another letter of recommendation. I'm hoping that I could use the summer before the masters program to do research with an economics professor (and thus get some more research experience and a letter), but these experiences seem only to be open to undergrads. Any tips on how I could land such an opportunity?