Perception is everything. Whether having research experience “move the needle” who knows? Unless you are on the admissions committee and KNOW what they value it is hard to say. The reality is kids and parents look at the above article and will pursue this perceived edge.
How did you get your child’s admission file?
Sure, I’m just guessing. But based on a waitlist/non-acceptance at a school of medium selectivity, it obviously was not something significant enough to move her app from waitlist to yes. Although, sure, for all I know it made the difference from no to waitlist, although I highly doubt it. But, you’re right, I don’t know that although the bottom line is that it clearly wasn’t something big enough to lock in an acceptance (nor did we ever expect it to be, of course - I’m just stating it as a data point in the discussion).
My child shared it with me.
ETA: Students who enroll at a college are allowed to see (and at least at his college also download) their admission file. High school guidance counselor and teacher recommendations were not included, but any admission officer’s notes about them are included.
Selective schools medium or high are looking to create a mosaic for the incoming class. So one never can know what “spot” they need to fill. Perhaps with a student researcher, or musical phenom, or X? My point is that something that is not usual for most 16, 17 year olds (published research) is now pursued as the next resume booster. Not withstanding the very few motivated high schoolers who are really interested in research.
I don’t think highly selective colleges care about research internships per se, but I do think they value students who have done research that has been nationally or internationally recognized. MIT is transparent about its efforts to recruit these types of students. Other highly selective colleges want those students too.
Without being too specific, my child is part of an elite group who has attained international recognition for his research. In addition to receiving special recognition and privileges from his ivy, he has been delighted to find a cohort of similarly distinguished peers there. All the students I know who attained a similar level of success were admitted to highly selective colleges.
So, it’s not simply about “doing” research. These highly selective colleges want wunderkinds who will enhance the reputation of their institutions and attract others like them. Unfortunately, what has happened with all this talent hoarding is that a small subset of colleges are now considered the places to study. When really, the kids who choose highly selective colleges are already accomplished and will do well whether they attend Harvard or Hoboken State. Of course, when it comes to funding the next big idea, it’s hard for most colleges to compete with the spending power of highly selective colleges.
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No school expects a HS student to have research. That said many do, and as momofboiler said, many STEM HSs offer this thru their school (in partnership w/ a local college or other type of institution for example, Fermi lab outside Chicago).
The other point I want to make is that many pay to play research opportunities are legit and good. They also enable PhD candidates to make money (not that all opportunities are with PhD students because some are w/ full profs). Admissions staff often do not know if a research opportunity is pay to play (the student would have to say so)…even if I did know it is not a ‘knock’ (can’t speak to all admission app readers).
For schools that admit by major, having research is also a good way to demonstrate good fit to said major.
Lastly, if one must prioritize opportunities, I encourage service over research.
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There appear to be a few things like this. If you just want sort of normal good EC credit for something like research, arts, or so on, that is not hard. If you want it to be a really significant factor in your application evaluation, it appears those sorts of schools will typically want a faculty member to evaluate your research paper, arts supplement, or so on before crediting it in that way.
Which is all fine–if you are confident you will do well in such a review. I am getting the sense, though, that if you make a really big deal out of something like that in your application, and then the faculty reviewer gives you a “meh” sort of rating, it could not only be not very helpful, it might actually be a bit counterproductive.
That sounds harsh, but if your pitch is you really want to be a researcher or dancer or whatever, and they don’t think that is realistic at their college given their normal standards, they may believe you would be better off pursuing those dreams elsewhere.
I don’t think this is universally true, but l’m sure does happen.
The point I want to make is that there are least a dozen, (maybe 20?), global science fair/research type competitions for HS students.
Regeneron ISEF alone gives out 600 medals (and those are hard to earn). Some of the top 21 award winners often have research published where they are the first author. Sometimes the award goes to a team, so multiple students get to put the award on their app. Admissions readers don’t need faculty to help with any of those, and that’s just one of the competitions out there where a HS student might enter their science research.
People don’t know what they don’t know about the applicant pool in any given year, and this science research type stuff is but one area (dance, art, theater, robotics, USAMO, USAPhO, etc etc). It’s just so competitive. And while most students obviously don’t reach this level of achievement in HS, there are thousands in each graduating class that do.
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Agree with this. If research is just another EC, list it on the activities section and maybe a few lines in Additional Info explaining what it was.
But if you are actually submitting a paper for review (or an arts supplement, or a maker project, etc.) you are asking the admissions staff to give that much higher weight in your application. And they might do exactly that, to your benefit, or detriment. In some cases, the student might have gotten in without the supplement as a well-rounded and capable student, but the supplement review could sink it.
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Very well said.
In addition, you can be sure that a large fraction of the STEM winners will be applying to MIT, and a large fraction of both STEM and arts winners will be applying to Harvard. So a person without that level of recognition should be very careful about submitting a supplement there without some validation by a person qualified to judge that the work is nationally competitive.
But far fewer of those winners will be applying to (also outstanding) colleges like Tufts or Rice. They may well welcome such a supplement.
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Just a note to add that UC Cosmos is not cheap, but it is not pay-to-play (by my definition). It has a 10-20% acceptance rate depending on the cluster and year, some may be lower than that. Full and partial Scholarships are available, my son received one.
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You’re right. I should have defined “pay-to-play” as programs that have non-competitive entry. The ones I listed (MMSS, HSHSP and COSMOS) all have competitive entry.
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Your kid should be a kid.
If he wants to do summer research or an internship, great - but don’t pay!! An internship should pay you. Hopefully it would expose them to areas of interest to see if they were right.
If they pick up carts from the parking lot at Kroger, that’s equally as great.
They should be a kid.
Trying to game a system for something that isn’t assured is not fair to the student.
99.9% of kids won’t have what you’re describing - and so many will be into many selective colleges…in fact most that attend them.
Good luck.
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There is great value in learning early what you do not enjoy.
Much like I learned as a child, by first hand experience, to never again eat steamed turnips, my job as a dishwasher at a seafood restaurant in high school taught me that I would not want to do that for a living! On a serious note, that job, in which I had several promotions up to cook, taught many valuable lessons: show up on time, value of a $, that no matter your role, you are just a cog in the wheel (but also that every cog has a role to play and is important), and much else. But I did decide while washing dishes on a Friday night, while my friends were out at a party, that an education would be important.
I do appreciate the comment above that much of the reported transformational scientific research performed by high school students is *slightly * overstated, but do not dismiss the notion that a small handful of high school students are actually significant contributors to meaningful research. However, the number must be small, if for no other reason that much scientific research is a grind and is often not completed in a narrow enough timeframe to fall within a high school student’s “prime years”. Few students would have the knowledge to be a meaningful contributor on groundbreaking scientific research as a sophomore or junior, and few would have the maturity level for a PI to trust with meaningful research.
It seems to me that the critical thing is to be exposed to as much as possible growing up. Some things will be like steamed turnips and some things will be like ice cream. You don’t know until you try. Further, there is no reason to embellish your contribution. Doing a job at 14, 15, and 16, whether mundane or groundbreaking, is important and impressive and builds fundamental life skills.
To bring this home, my daughter did a summer program / class through Duke TIPon genetics. She enjoyed the class and thought that genetics was fairly interesting. The next summer she contacted a local company that specialized in bovine reproduction and genetics. She was a lab tech, nothing more, nothing less - observed,took notes, cleaned up, labeled things. But she was in the lab every day and asked questions and learned that she enjoyed being in the lab.
The next summer, last summer, she attended a pay for play laboratory based genetics course at a “prestigious” college. She did not do it for the prestige, not sure there is any, but over 3 weeks she performed 10 labs with full reports, and a final mini research project she had to present.
That has benefited her in her AP bio class where she is the only student to get a 100 on every lab and lab report. She takes them seriously and has wonderful written reports.
So, now as a HS junior, she has 3 years of consistent progress and exposure to genetics and lab work. She wanted more research experience this coming summer, so over winter break she researched biology professors at a local state directional university and found a professor that had published in an area in which she had an interest. So, she drafted a resume and emailed him. He immediately responded. While he is going on sabbatical this summer and will not be performing research, he spoke with her at great length about her interests, gave some career advice, and, passed her resume along to a colleague in his department. That colleague has hired her as a lab assistant for the upcoming summer. So, she will be getting more lab experience and getting paid. Beats washing dishes.
But, in her resume, she did not describe her prior lab experience at the company other than what it was, a lab tech. No embellishment was necessary. In fact, had she done otherwise, most college professors (and by extension for this discussion college admissions officers) would clearly know that a 14 year old rising HS sophomore did no meaningful laboratory research.
The point of this is that we’ve urged our daughter to challenge herself, explore interests, and do new and different things. None specifically designed to gain an advantage in admissions, but as NUM articulated so well, to learn what she likes and does not like. Do things for the experience, not specifically for future admissions, and you will gain a lot of useful insights and knowledge, some of which may eventually prove useful for admissions purposes or life in general.
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Yes, in the program I noted below, the program my daughter participated in had an exhaustive application process and about 30% of the applicants are selected. It WAS expensive.
For us, the program had multiple benefits that helped us justify the cost: she had to attend class and lab daily for 3 weeks, had to wake up on her own and be on time for class, turn in homework and problem sets, learn what living with a roommate was like (that may have been worth the price itself), and, for a fairly introverted person, making a friend group.
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Not quite research, but just to share a somewhat similar anecdote–our S24 did a semi-selective summer program at a prominent university where they had a variety of different programs of different lengths, but his program specifically involved just taking two of their regular summer classes, along with other people in his program and also some regular college students. It was definitely not cheap, but it ended up a really valuable experience.
Originally he was going to do both a Bio class and a Bio lab, but at the suggestion of his college counselor he swapped the Bio lab for a humanities class, and in his case it ended up being an Ethics class a new friend in the program suggested he check out during their brief “shopping period”. It was a relatively small class, and the professor was a grad student originally from the UK who structured it in a sort of UK style, including with an oral exam at the end.
And he really liked it! This combination of classes ended up great preparation for some of his senior year classes, and he also ended up incorporating his new-found interest in Ethics into his college applications. In fact, he used one of those papers for a graded paper supplement, and generally it became an important component of his interdisciplinary interest discussions.
He also got some insights into life in the dorms, what he was looking for in a social vibe, and so on.
OK, so we know this is not a credential per se, but it definitely helped him write more meaningful applications, particularly for the more exploratory/interdisciplinary colleges, because he actually had a meaningful experience precisely along those lines.
So that is another example of the possible value of the experience, but I also 100% agree that the cost could be prohibitive (although this is one of the programs that has some need-based aid available).
^^ why wealthier students do better on the SAT.
They have so many more enrichment activities!
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Absolutely, although there are lower cost versions of some of this. Like, you could likely get pretty much all the same academic benefits from some well chosen summer classes at a local college you can commute to.
But even then, some kids need to work during the summer. Fortunately that is a valuable experience too.
Still, all this is why I personally have zero problem with contextual assessment of academic qualifications.
We are in Texas; and Rice, University of Texas, Trinity, just to name a few offer specific enrichment programs for students that do not have financial ability to pay. I think if a student wants to be involved there are opportunities especially if they are unable to pay.