Hi, I’m a freshman in high school who has had the lucky opportunity of getting a researcher who works in genetics (that’s a topic I’m heavily interested). I’m not really sure how to go forward with this as my mentor is relatively young and doesn’t know how to work with highschoolers either. I studied his research papers and am studying Campbells cell biology and genetics in order to learn and hopefully qualify for IBO next year or so. I really need help idek what to do after getting a mentor. Do I do my own research and start my own project, or do I do the assignments he gives me until he thinks I’m fit to work alongside him? He said that he would give me stuff related to programming and data analysis which I can do.
If your mentor is ready to help you with your own research and advise you on how to write a research paper , then start your own project , write a paper and publish it.
It’s great that you are already thinking about research as a high school freshman. You are indeed fortunate to have someone willing to mentor you. However, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to “do my own research and start my own project” for a number of reasons.
First, you don’t know the subject matter, or don’t know it well enough yet. You are not familiar with what has been done in the field, what approaches people have tried and failed, what is the latest trend, etc. Even if you are highly motivated to figure out things yourself, it is much better to have your mentor guide you. That’s why even graduate students need dissertation advisors.
Second, if your own research project is experimental in nature, how are you going to pay for equipments and where will you put them? Your mentor may be generous enough to let you use their lab space, but some of the equipments can be expensive and delicate to handle.
Your mentor’s suggestion makes sense because advanced high schoolers do have the skills to write programs (e.g., python) for data analysis. It’s certainly more interesting for you, and more useful for your mentor, than the proverbial having you wash test tubes. You only need a computer and access to repositories of data. Once your mentor knows what you are capable of, you may be given more responsibilities, more challenging problems to look at, leading perhaps to some publishable results in two to three years.
thank you! I’m just worried I won’t accomplish anything with research if its not a ton of papers published because I’ve seen some Youtubers like Rishab Jain publish 2-4 papers while doing independent research on computational neuroscience which sounds like graduate level stuff (then again, I wouldn’t know) I really want to get into a prestigious premed program like PLME :(. Sorry if I sound whiny or anything I’m just really scared that I’ll go wrong somewhere.
Please ignore the YouTubers. At your age, you don’t know much at all, really, about existing research, research methods, publishing, or anything – and you’re not supposed to! Every scientist has to start from the beginning, so the best thing you can do with this opportunity is just that. Do the assignments your mentor gives you, learn how to read and interpret a scientific paper, and get ready for some grunt work in the lab. That’s the necessary foundation (along with doing well in school). There aren’t very many true pre-med programs – in most colleges (aside from combination BS/MD, etc. programs like PLME), you’ll declare a major and make sure you take the requisite classes to qualify for med school, which may or may not be in your major. The most important thing you can do to prepare for that is focus on your high school classes, and make sure you’re succeeding with a challenging schedule. Sure, explore ECs that are relevant to your interests (and it sounds like this is a terrific opportunity), but there isn’t a single EC that punches your ticket to a highly selective program like PLME.
High schoolers are not expected to be doing research, let alone “publishing a ton of papers.” In fact, undergraduates aren’t expected to do that as well. This mindset is very unhealthy and is an unfortunate consequence of wanting to get ahead in college admissions – universities bear some responsibilities, too, as some like to brag that certain percentages of their incoming freshmen are “published authors.”
My advice for you is to view this ‘working with a mentor on research’ as an excellent opportunity to learn as much as possible about genetics/neuroscience and determine whether you genuinely like the field or like research. If a paper or two falls out of the pan at the end of the process, great! But DO NOT go into it looking to publish. And DO NOT think that because someone on the web has published, you must do the same. Publishing something of dubious quality can do you more harm than good long term.
And to echo what everyone else has said… right now, you don’t know what you don’t know.
The advances you want to make in science may be coming from a different field entirely- so you may conclude you want to major in applied math. Or the field that fascinates you turns out to be psychology. Or you learn that the really cool stuff happening in genetics right now is coming out of chemistry (yes, boring old chemistry).
Science is about collaboration. And genetics is about 15 different subfields-- most of which you know nothing about because you’re a HS kid!
Do the assignments your advisor assigns you! And make sure you are asking questions, following up appropriately, and also leaving time for your school work and friends, etc.
There are tens of thousands of actual, working scientists whose projects take YEARS before anything valuable comes from them. That’s the lesson you need to be learning right now- this isn’t an episode on TV where everything wraps up in an hour. It takes years and years in some areas to produce something publishable-- or even replicable by other researchers.
First of all, that’s awesome. Congratulations on that.
I am a parent of two STEM kids who both did research in high school. One started second semester freshman year and continued for 3 full years. The other started the summer after freshman year and continued for 3 summers. One ended up with published papers; the other did not, but both did very well with college admissions. Whether you get a published paper or not is mostly out of your control, so you shouldn’t get hung up on that.
Instead, what you should focus upon is to make best use of this opportunity you have. Let’s assume for a minute that you end really liking genetics and that the professor finds you valuable enough to stay engaged throughout high school. You will be given more responsibility over time and get a far better understanding of genetics than most people at your age can dream of. Regardless of whether you get a paper or not, you will have much you can write about in your eventual college application. And if you learn that you don’t like genetics that much after all, that too will be a useful learning experience.
