In my neck of the woods, it’s been a huge challenge even for college students to find lab work/research this year. There was an extra two layers of hoop jumping for a family member to continue working in the same lab where they were already a member because of budget cuts.
Even college students are working for free/volunteering to get the experiences.
And don’t discount the supervision and training a HS student would require. With budget and staff cuts, profs are doing more with a lot less.
Although it might not be impossible, I think obtaining research right now as a HS student will be very difficult. Here are a few suggestions for your student to gain knowledge/experience:
Contact mental health facilities in your community and inquire about volunteering (if allowed) or speaking with a mental health professional (informational interview).
Ask her biology/chemistry teachers if they would help her learn more about lab techniques, data collection etc.
Read research papers.
Cold call bio/chem profs at a college and ask if they have time for an informational interview. Look at any publications.
Is there a mental health club in her HS that she can join?
If medical school is a possibility (keep in mind she is a rising junior and may change her mind multiple times) then patient facing volunteering, public facing experiences (she can work in a supermarket), volunteering in a senior center etc are things to look into. Our volunteer ambulance has a program for HS students.
Patient-facing experience is much more valuable for someone contemplating a career as a physician than research lab exposure. Med schools value clinical exposure more highly than they do lab research. Medicine isn’t done in the lab; it’s done with people. In many ways, medicine is a customer service job. I know several doctors who have said the best training for working with patients was working in customer service positions in high school and college-- working as waitstaff, counter service servers, retail salespersons, summer camp counselors, lifeguards…
I will second volunteering at senior care facilities. It won’t count as clinical exposure for med school, but it will get her into a situation where she will have to deal with the largest group of healthcare consumers in the US: the elderly. Additionally, many nursing/retirement facilities will hire high school students to work as dietary aides so besides exposure, she’ll also be earning some money. These same facilities will often sponsor volunteers and dietary aides for the CNA training.
CNA or junior EMT training may be another avenue your daughter can explore. Depending of your state laws and regulations, she may be able get her CNA or EMT certifications at age 16 and volunteer in those capacities.
Specifically for mental health–see if your community has any outreach programs for the unhoused she can volunteer with. Many [perhaps even most] of the unhoused population have mental illnesses so she’ll get a lot of exposure to those living with mental health issues.
I strongly recommend that she contact a local college or community college librarian to help her find an appropriate reading list. College-level librarians have special training and expertise in research areas and are subject matter specialists. They can help your daughter find entry points into reading papers in her area of interest so the papers aren’t over her head and aren’t from unreliable sources. Subject area specialist librarians can help her find more resources later on when she needs to dig down deeper into a specific area. Neuroscience vis-à-vis mental health is very broad area of research and there are million different directions your daughter’s interest can go.
This is a little off topic…but why would doing research help a student determine they want to become a physician? Many many researchers are NOT physicians.
If the goal is to determine whether this student wants to become a physician, perhaps they should reach out to a variety of physicians and shadow…if they are allowed to do so.
And…any research the student does in high school won’t matter one bit once they are applying to medical schools if they plan to start after they finish undergrad.
Just a nicer way of addressing what many pre-meds think they need for college and/or med school admissions, and I also mentioned prioritizing patient facing experience over research.
I think she could benefit from in-depth communication with some Ph.D. students. Professors are not likely to respond to cold calls/emails but maybe graduate students would? I’m a high school teacher. I have heard of students reaching out to alumni to get involved in projects in local universities and research institutes. I don’t know those students though, just remember hearing about their attempts.
Here is a searchable database of summer research programs.
I ran a quick search for biology/medicine/neuroscience + chemistry for HS students and got 36 hits.
The largest number of California results were for the MESA programs at various Cal States. In order to participate in MESA, your child must attend certain designated partner high schools.
MESA seems to be more focused on mathematics and engineering than biological sciences, but it might be worth a look if your child’s HS participates in the program.
Harvey Mudd is part of the Summer Science Program (SSP) consortia
SSP accepts about 400 students nationally and sends them to 10 different university campus.
As mentioned above, you’ll need to check to see if these programs are still in existence since the major cuts in NIH funding have shuttered so many research and science outreach programs.
Really unlikely because grad students are under even more time pressure than their PIs. Also, a grad student isn’t allowed to bring outsiders into the labs. They would need permission from the PI and the other grad students using the lab to do that.
Excellent advice and feedbacks, I am very grateful. D and I will look for cold call routes and actions items you suggested. The couple of internships she is doing making her drift towards Psychology and mental health. She is enjoyinng all her extra curriculars at the same time she wants to do more in sciences.
Are there any science centers in your community that accept HS volunteers? This is a way to support her interests while also gaining transferable skills.
