Hypothetically, if a high school student has a scientific paper published in a peer-reviewed without any help from a university professor, how strong his application would be ? Would that be a strong boost if he’s applying to unis like MIT and Caltech? Also, how will this achievement compare to some other applicants with medals in international olympiads i.e. IMO, IPhO, IOI etc?
It would definitely be a very strong addition to an application. IMO, it couldn’t hurt.
So, if the student writes about it in the CommonApp activities section, will the inclusion of the link to the paper in the journal website be sufficient?
I think it would be. I don’t know if there’s a space to put links, but if there is then go for it. If not, perhaps just the title of the paper and the name of the journal? Basically anything that would be enough for someone to Google it.
Anyway, obviously an application can’t be competitive on that merit alone, but it would certainly be a good boost.
I would list it in the activities section prominently and I would include the whole article as a supplement. I would alos suggest that if a teacher who writes your rec is aware of the paper, they mention it in the red. The counselor could also do this.
I have heard that there are some journals where you pay to get published, rather than having your article selected by an editorial staff. I hope that is not what you are talking about.
The chance of this sort of thing happening, is just about zip. In order to get to that stage, the student would almost certainly have been working in the field for some time, and will almost certainly already have several publications as second author. First author publications in good peer-reviewed journals rarely appear out of nowhere.
@me29034 is referring to this: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19710979#Comment_19710979
Publishing in something like that is WORSE than worthless – in the fact that you’ve actually had to pay out of pocket. But I’m skeptical like @happymomof1 says.
No, I was talking about the European Journal of Physics. It’s a very well-known journal under IOP publishing. It’s not a predatory journal, which takes mamey from authors to publish papers. Here’s the link for EJP: http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0143-0807
I was asking cause a friend of mine did some theoretical work on his own and sent it to the journal two months ago. The referee reports came in two weeks ago. They were really positive and if everything goes right, there is a good chance he might get published. He didn’t have any professor to help him either, I can vouch for that. I was wondering how such activity may play a role in his application.
So, the scenarios described by @me29034 and @happymomof1 are not the case here.
My friend did survive the peer review process quite comfortably. He didn’t have any other publication before. This was is 1st paper (as the sole author).
IF it happens it would be a feather in his cap for sure. But he would still need the academic stats to get into those schools.
Yes, indeed.