Research: with a professor or at a summer program?

DigitalDad
Fri, 17 Feb 2023 16:13:26 +0000

blossom:

Second, most HS kids don’t realize that “research” doesn’t come in nice bite-sized portions. A team could be funded for a 5 year grant-- where all the exciting stuff happens in the last five months- but that mean 4+ years of “drudgery” and foundational work-- and if you are staffed in year 2, that’s a LOT of drudgery!

That!

I realize I’m digressing from the HS focus - but to the above point, my daughter’s first two internships (one 3 summer-months, the other full-year) were in the “field”, and while on relevant/visible research projects at respected institutions and involving challenging tasks, they still were typical, repetitive “undergraduate intern” work. They mostly required commitment, persistence, and modestly accepting that someone had to do the “grunt” work.

Then again, isn’t that precisely what the next school (college, grad school), or professor will be looking for in their first-year candidates? They need fewer people having “published” and expecting step “up” from there, and instead more smart people, who have a sufficient background and are willing to put the hours in.

For my daughter, she fostered good relations with her research coordinators, which resulted it good letters of recommendation for her grad school applications, in addition to having repeatedly proven long-term commitment to “applicable” research tasks.