Engineering with no engineering extracurriculars?

Colleges & Universities Yale University
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<p>@mathyone </p>

<p>Just read your last post. It is sad that your school district would haul the family to truancy court when their son is working on an enormous possible breakthrough in pancreatic cancer detection. The world might not have lost someone like Steve Jobs if such a cheap test were routinely available.</p>

<p>You sound very cynical and bitter. I don’t know why. I believe kids are able to accomplish unimaginable things if given the right encouragement. Does a kid with the talent of someone like Yo-Yo Ma playing Carnegie Hall also make you upset? If the kid had to miss school to play various venues, would that be okay? If the mother had to drive him/her to lessons in say NYC would that be all right? If both parents were accomplished musicians and the father gave his child extra lessons is this somehow cheating? I have trouble following exactly what it is that you are upset about but it seems to be just about everything.</p>

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<p>Wouldn’t it make more sense to learn about a field in grad school, then do the research? What is the purpose of doing the research when you are in high school?</p>

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<p>^^The pursuit of knowledge?? Is there one time when this is more appropriate than another? Btw, kids do research in college as early as freshman year if their school affords them the opportunity to do so. </p>

<p>The problem my son is working on is at the graduate school level. Being liberal arts majors, my wife and I can’t “help” him even if we wanted to, so the work he is doing is as original as it comes. That is another reason why I take exception to @mathyone’s uninformed and unsubstantiated comments.</p>

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<p>@SoCalDad2</p>

<p>How do you do that boxy quote thing, btw?</p>

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<p>@SoCaldad2 </p>

<p>Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be flip. To answer your question, it is a matter of exposure. The younger you are the better it is to be exposed to different things. If Tiger Woods wasn’t handed a golf club at 3 1/2 and then never touched a club, Mozart a violin, or Bobby Fischer a chessboard, we likely would have never heard of these people. Again, the earlier the exposure the better. I’ve heard it said that mathematicians tend to peak at age thirty though I have no idea if this is true.</p>

<p>The point is, developing the skills necessary to conduct proper research together with the maturity, persistence, imagination and dealing with adversity and challenges (like my son is now) to do so are all important academic and life skills. Learning them sooner rather than later is an advantage. Kids who do research are in no way obligated to pursue the same field in college or grad school. However, if they happen to find their passion early (like Tiger, Mozart, or Fischer) then all the better because they can complete their 10,000 hours sooner.</p>

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<p>For 99% of high school kids “doing research” is providing some gruntwork as part of a team that actually has the requisite expertise. Nothing wrong with that. They see what “research” is all about and it lets colleges know that they have some potential interest and were willing (either independently or with parental cajoling) to spend the time. My kid did it. So did I, way back - scanning seismographic charts for data points; all day long, ad nauseum. I’m sure its an automated task today.</p>

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<p>You are completely misinterpreting what I said. The OP was a bit frustrated feeling that she wasn’t didn’t have much support. The boy you mentioned has an awful lot of support and I think saying to the OP, look at this guy, he did this all on his own, is rather misleading and could be quite discouraging to the OP who doesn’t seem to have the kinds of support and encouragement that he does. You could as well say to a struggling student cellist, look you can do it all on your own, you don’t need an instructor–look, Yo Yo Ma’s kid did it on his own. Would that be perceived as encouraging?</p>

<p>I’m not sure why you think I am uninformed. I’m not. </p>

<p>Think also about this. The boy had a good idea. It wasn’t all that novel though–there was already quite a bit of precedent in the literature (other people had already been able to detect other cancers using antibodies bound to nanotubes). But that’s actually good for a student project because it shows it should be do-able. Yet 200 people turned him down. Why do you suppose that happened? The fact is, if you don’t want your centrifuges exploding all the time, (or worse–people can die) it takes an awful lot of supervision and training and money and space to take someone on, even a part-time student, and most people don’t feel a high school student knows enough and will contribute enough for it all to be worthwhile. Of course I’m glad that someone was willing to support this boy.</p>

<p>Even if a student just walks in and is handed a project, that can be a great experience, to learn firsthand what it is like to work in a research lab. But I think there is a difference between that experience and what most people think of when you say independent research. That’s all I was saying.</p>

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<p>Geez, did you even read my posts? I wasn’t talking about the boy to the OP I was talking about him to you! And I never said, he did it all on his own without any support, I said the idea was his not somebody else’s.</p>

<p>I am not trying to discourage the OP in any way but you keep trying to twist my words to come out that way. Btw, I know plenty of examples of kids who read journals or scour the internet and come up with novel ideas on their own. A girl out on Long island immediately comes to mind who worked on negative bubbles. I think she did most her her research just in her room.</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m done sparring with you. All that matters is that the OP hopefully gets into wherever she is hoping to attend. I wish her good luck!</p>

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<p>I am sorry if I diverted the OP’s thread into something not helpful. Here is the best advice I have. First of all, a research project is most likely going to be pretty time consuming. The OP already said she is very busy and she also has a job. Considering this, I think it’s unlikely she will have time for a research project, but might be able to line something up this summer, if she doesn’t need to work a lot of hours this summer. If the OP can think of a good idea for a project that interests her, fantastic. If she can’t, just identify areas of interest and contact people working in those areas. Convince them that you are interested in their field, responsible and hardworking. </p>

<p>As far as the Olympiads go, it certainly doesn’t hurt to try to get the school to offer them. For a prospective EE who thinks she is good at physics, I noticed there is a physics olympiad, that might be worth checking out. Also, even if the school is totally unhelpful, OP can check out the computing olympiad, which I learned about recently on this site. As far as I understand, it’s free and it’s an individual competition. I don’t think your school needs to be involved at all. This is assuming some programming background…</p>

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<p>The point isn’t that a few kids across the country can come up with a valid super-project and somehow get support. It’s really another discussion, whether adcoms believe this kid is so unique that he/she had the completely idea on his own- and developed the processes- entirely alone. In general, the answer is, no. </p>

<p>The point is, if a kid is truly interested in, say, engineering, she pursues the experiences that contribute to an understanding of the field, the tasks, collaboration and mindset. Beyond class. One way or another. And, for a highly competitive school, the attributes that lead a kid to pursue a variety of related/valid experiences are the same ones that matter very much to an elite, from the outset: vision, drive, follow-through, commitment, (for starters.) It is not good to say, I took a seminar, I scored this, I don’t have further opportunities. That’s a conversational stop. </p>

<p>Plenty of engineering programs will take a chance on a gal who is bright in math-sci. But the subject was Yale. </p>

<p>There may be kids working with nuclear whatever. But there are also plenty getting their start filing, copying, transcribing- and observing, discussing, and learning. There are kids who climb out of the high school box and there are those who simply don’t. Which do we think have a greater chance of tackling and mastering the challenges of an elite’s engineering program?</p>

<p>Let’s also realize that the kid who pursues greatness as a loner, adds a challenge. The elites, today, are looking for self-starters, sure. But also kids who can engage with (a variety of) peers, balance their personal goals/interests with those of their groups, and, yup, play by the rules. It is a risk to assume extraordinary accomplishment makes a kid compelling to adcoms, just for being that extreme.</p>