As an international high school student, should I report in the Common App Activities section that I wrote and sent a Philosophy paper to a local university, even if it is still being evaluated and probably won’t have been published until most universities’ deadlines ? I didn’t receive any help by my Philosophy professor, I worked on it entirely by myself. It consists of an analysis of the concept of duty and the effects of meta-ethical views, such as moral nihilism, on the public sphere of discourse.
I thought it would add a lot to my applicant profile - Philosophy is my major spike - but I am a little worried about it not having been published (yet) in any major academic journal. What do you guys think ?
You have to be realistic to the amount of value that this will add. This is equivalent to saying I applied to vs I was accepted at . Anyone can do the first with paying the application fee.
Don’t worry about not being published. Very few high school students are. Most students don’t even try to publish as a 1st author until the end of their PhD program. If you are lucky, you may get a chance as a 3rd+ author as an upper level undergrad. Writing for an academic journal is an artform unto itself. Without the guidance of someone who is has been at least a reviewer, it is very difficult.
I disagree. Everyone here is saying that you submitted it so you should add it to your application. You sent it to a professor to review, you didn’t send it to a peer-reviewed journal. Peer-reviewed journals do a cursory evaluation to see if your manuscript is a decent fit for their journal, then it is sent to peer-reviewers who further evaluate it. Saying you submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal and it is under review is VERY different from just sending it to some professor to read. Additionally, I would see it as a weakness that you didn’t work with a professor rather than a strength - what does a high school student know about philosophy and writing manuscript for a journal? Even the most successful professors work with someone and get input from others. Personally, I don’t necessarily think it would hurt your application to mention it, but I definitely don’t think it adds much.
I don’t mean to discourage you, but working with a professor the whole way through in the future would be the best.
I think others were saying that the OP can say he/she submitted the paper to a professor at a local university for review. Of course he/she should not say the paper was submitted to a peer reviewed journal when that is clearly not the case. That said I don’t think that saying a research paper was submitted to a professor will carry much (if any) weight in the admission process.
Actually, I did send it to a peer-reviewed journal and now is under review for publishing. The journal is published by a Brazilian university named Unisinos; probably this information wasn’t so clear in my original post, I sent it to a university’s academic journal, not just to the university. In this case, you think I should report it ? Yeah, I know it is really difficult for a high school student to write a research paper without any help, but that’s (unfortunately) how things usually work in my country. This culture of high school extracurricular research is very uncommon here and professors don’t instruct their students in doing so (it is something really alien to them).
You could say that you submitted “” to XYZ University Journal and Unisinos journal.
Not sure if this would be “Hey, s/he shows intellectual curiosity and proactiveness” or “this kid has no idea how journals work.”
I wonder if including a link would be helpful.
Agree that you can say that you submitted the title of paper to the University Journal and the Unisinos journal if that is what you did do. I would not submit a link – admissions officers are swamped and are not looking for more to read.