Cambridge Center for International Research

blossom
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:49:53 +0000

Like all of the “pay to play” experiences-- some aspects are valuable, some are less so. Depends on how you define “worth it”. In general, a reference from a professor at a “top notch” university will NOT replace the required recommendation from a HS teacher who has taught your kid-- it may or many not be additive. Some schools won’t look at these extra recommendations, some will, but there are no colleges which will consider it as being significantly more important than what the actual HS teachers have to say.

So like everything else- trade-offs. If the goal is to learn the basic structure of how real world research gets done, it can be valuable. If the goal is to leapfrog over the standard college admissions process with a “nice to have extra” it is likely of middling value. If it teaches a kid that actual research takes years and years and tons of expertise and an entire team of skilled colleagues, then conjuring up a project which is publishable after a couple of months… most real world academics don’t buy that. Even research that doesn’t require expensive lab equipment (econometrics, sociology, history) doesn’t start and end with a bang without actual expertise. I’ve seen some of these “papers” produced by HS students… let’s just say that without college level statistics with a strong facility in Matlab or R or similar, the results aren’t exactly ground-breaking.

And the ones that DO require the footprint (live animal subjects, sophisticated lab set ups, actual bench science)-- HS kids just don’t have the skills (yet). In the real world, just getting a proposal approved can take months… without a single prototype.

Take a look at RSI, for example- a highly regarded research program which IS a game-changer in terms of college admissions… is your kid’s idea at all comparable to what RSI would support?