Here's a description of the William and Mary REU, which I attended in the summer of 1994, after my sophomore year.

The William and Mary REU runs eight weeks. When I went it started at the beginning of June and ran through the end of July. Because of Harvard's schedule, this was inconvenient: I had an exam on Saturday and was supposed to be at William and Mary the next Tuesday. They were very understanding, however, and allowed me to arrive a day late. Nevertheless, anyone accepted should speak with the director about potential date conflicts early. If you have things to do during August and September before school starts, the early scheduling is nice. Otherwise, you could be in for a very boring August.

William and Mary is a center for Linear Algebra, so all of the projects come from linear algebra. The projects vary from concrete matrix completion problems, e.g. given a matrix with certain properties and two unknown entries, how can we fill in the two unknown entries and get a positive definite, or doubly nonnnegative, or pseudo-magic, or whatever the matrix property of the month is, to abstract linear operator problems. Most of the problems are very concrete and come from real applications. There are computers available, although competition for them is occasionally steep. Many students came late in the morning and worked late in the evening to compensate.

Each project has a faculty sponsor who presents it during the first week. During that week, the students pick what project to work on. Some students work in groups, some alone. When I was there, there were two groups of two and four poeple working individually. Each group or individual works closely with the faculty member who proposed the project. Most of the faculty members are very accessible and will want to meet almost daily (if only to avoid planning the calculus syllabus for the fall). As with any REU, if you're going to go, talk to someone who has gone to find out about specific professors.

There are usually 6-8 students, depending on funding. The stipend is comparable to other REU's, around $2400, and includes room in the dorm. The dorm rooms are one-room doubles. There is a kitchen in the dorm. All the REU students live together, which creates a friendly atmosphere. When I was there, I was the only Ivy student. The others were from UNC, Trinity, Miami University of Ohio, etc. Although most of them had taken more linear algebra than I had, I didn't find it difficult to learn what I needed. I found that my background was more abstract than most of theirs.

Williamsburg is a small town about two hours from Washington. There are restaurants and shopping within walking distance of the school (and a nice public library). There are a lot of interesting things within driving distance, amusement parks, Monticello, not to mention DC, and there's usually at least one student with a car.

I would recommend the William and Mary REU for anyone who doesn't mind staring at matrices for eight weeks.

--Adam L. Cohen (alcohen@fas.harvard.edu)