what AP’s do they tend to take?
they usually take APUSH, AP lang, AP calc BC, AP Physics C Mechanics, and most people take AP electives, such as AP comp sci, and AP psych or AP bio
@Microsoft_Ninja I think @onthewestfence was asking where the AP students from your school usually go to college.
lol thanks. They go to a variety of places, but most go to Penn state
Anyone’s doing research?
I want to, but I don’t know how. I don’t know any phd’s
@Mahindra I am through a variety of people. I have already presented one research project at USC’s Moving Targets research symposium about preterm delivery and am preparing to submit my abstract to the World Conference on Insulin Resistance Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease. I don’t use a PhD per se but rather do research through the organization MiOra which partners me with people so we can do research together and I can learn how to perform my own. I really love doing research honestly it’s a lot of fun!!!
However they only do research within the healthcare fields.
plz tell me how I could do some research
@Microsoft_Ninja Well you could always go the traditional route with sending mass emails to PhD students and professors at local colleges asking if you could work as an unpaid intern/volunteer in their lab over the summer. Usually this is done in January/February so that they are given adequate time to respond and plan for your participation.
Then you could go for one of the independent routes and find something within the world that you would like to improve then form a hypothesis about a probable cause for it. (i.e. genetics causing gestational diabetes, or eggs causing a protein allergy [you get the point]) You would then obtain data from various sources and organize them into a cohesive format such as a table or graph and perform various functions such as Student T-Tests, standard deviation, find averages, medians, etc. This can all be done behind the screen of a computer.
The second of the independent routes is to again find something that you would like to improve, but something that you can conduct research for within a lab. Then you would obtain the permission of a professor or even a teacher at a local prep school to use their lab over the summer, and possibly ask for their mentoring. They are more likely to take you on this way because it shows you aren’t the average high school leech, you can take initiative and understand that your dreams and passions are only worth pursuing if they help others.
Then you can choose to apply to research programs at universities specifically geared towards high school students. Some examples of this are the Navy’s Research and Engineering Program, the Ivies’ specific residency programs, and so forth. These all occur over the summer and generally require to reside within certain dorms usually require you to pay a tuition.
Finally, you can go my way and go with an organizational mentoring research program. My program known as MiOra (I will not post the link since I am prohibited from doing so. Just type in MiOra into any search engine and you’ll be good) operates within the U.S. You create an account and then you’ll send an email to the person listed under Distance Internships. By the way, under Healthcare Internships, there is a document which shows many, many internships that you can apply for, just check their own requirements. Then you’ll be expected to describe the lines of work within the healthcare field that you are passionate about and email over a resume. From there, Dr. Equils or someone else will work with you towards creating your very own research. You’ll be guided in the ways as to obtain data from organizations such as the CDC, the American Heart Association, etc., learn how to write a proper abstract, to conduct mathematical functions relevant to your data on excel, how to create your poster for a research conference, and depending on your research, how to write your own report. My friend did research on Crispr and what she ended up doing was creating a research paper in layman’s terms for access by people without such high knowledge of the specific vocabulary used or just those not allowed access to university and governmental research archives. You can also look them up on facebook and see the various things that students within their program have done.
The best part is that all the mentors and organization heads want to see high school students armed with the ways that they can expose themselves to the healthcare field so they will not hold back from letting you do things, then correcting your methods and such. I’ve been working with them since August and I have had the time of my life honestly speaking. Another great thing is the exposure to professionals within the field. When I attended the conference, not only did I get to present my research, I got to meet other MiOra mentees as well as professionals within the medical and pharmaceutical fields and I am very proud to say that they were all impressed with the work that we did. So much so that I even ended up getting an offer to intern in the lab of a professor from UCSF over the summer which utterly blew my mind because it’s a graduate school!! Besides that, the environment created by MiOra is the best that I’ve come across in a long time.
The thing is, I have tried my luck for traditional hospital volunteering programs everywhere within a 50 mile radius and have gotten either turned down because of my age (15), or flat out rejected. It was disheartening to say the least especially since I don’t have a really great advice chain to go to, I will be the first in my family to attend college so there were no connections for me in that area. I had to go out and look for myself and I am blessed to have found this. The benefits are real and so is the opportunity.
So man if you don’t have something in place that people have already done, go out there and find it for yourself, sometimes you just gotta yank opportunity by its fast moving horns and get on as fast as you can because you don’t know the next time it’ll come. You just do you and you’ll be fine.
@onlyworthypotato wow that sounds awesome! How does MiOra work (how do you sign up, get paired with a mentor, etc.)? Do you do all of your research online or do you go to a lab near you?
@Itwixster It really is! 
MiOra works by doing a sort of questionnaire of your interests when you first sign up, you describe your interests passions, whether you’d want to work in a field that you maybe hadn’t thought of. Stuff like that. Then for research specifically, I went to the section on the website titled Healthcare Internships and then emailed my interest through the email listed under Distance Internships. From there, Dr. Equils, who is the founder of the nonprofit organization, contacted me asked me to describe my passions, interests, and what I’d be interested in doing in the future. From there she just emailed me data from the American Heart Association and told me a project that she had come up with for me to do, you know since I was basically a full fledged greenie :)). It just sort of carried forward from that point on. Based off of my knowledge, you do your research online, however I’m sure you can indicate that you’d like to be able to work in a lab and Dr. Equils and her team of mentors will connect you to a professor or PhD candidate or the like near you. For me, the only time I had to step away from my computer was to present my work at USC. That was about it. You also don’t need any previous experience, it’s only expected that since you are given this opportunity you show up and rise to the occasion to learn whenever it is needed
@onlyworthypotato It says that its for disadvantaged minority students. I am middle class so does this still apply to me? Also, does this include computer science internships
@onlyworthypotato Thanks for telling us all about it!
@Mahindra I’m a middle class student myself but it doesn’t include comp sci I think…
@Itwixster No problemo! Besides, what good is anything that I do if I can’t get others to revel in the joy of doing it too >:D<
@onlyworthypotato Ok thx. I really appreciate it
@Mahindra No problemo! 
@onlyworthypotato how long did you spend on each research project?
@Itwixster For my first one, since it was the summer and I had a near constant flow of free time, 15 days. For my second one it has taken my about a month thus far, I’m polishing my abstract at the moment.
I have two piano recitals in the upcoming week and I’m soooo nervous.
@collegeready33 That sounds very stressful!!! Relax dude you’ve got this