Stewie's "Shoud I take it out or do I leave it in?"

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Should I sent in my stuff?</p>

<p>See, I did this “Research” but it wasn’t the typical research really top-applicants do. I didn’t have a mentor, I didn’t work in a lab. Believe me, I’d have LOVED the opportunity but it never came about. I know I could’ve e-mailed a professor around here and tried to get a spot but even then I had transportation problems and then scheduling and at the end, I just never did professional research. </p>

<p>BUT, here is the big but. </p>

<p>Over the summer before my senior year, I began reading up everything I could on ALS. I mean I would sit in the library poring over scientific papers and articles and books and learning everything I could about the disease. </p>

<p>I put it down as one of my extracurriculars. Actually I put “researching medical conditions, learning about mechanism, etc” but I made sure to state that I was simply “researching” at home, through my computer. Because it’s not an organized something (i.e. program, organization, etc) I just put it as a hobby. </p>

<p>Then I started this project. I mapped out the windows of high ALS incidence around the world in the past 40 years. I am sure there were many windows but due to the data availability (data available to a high school student with no ID for neurological papers) I only got 10. </p>

<p>Then I compared the trace metal compositions of the soil and water in the areas of these windows. Again, due to data availability (or lack thereof) I had to rely on various sources and draw several conclusions (for example, in investigating a window in Wisconsin, I had to rely on data of experiments done on Lake Michigan)</p>

<p>My aim was to gather more evidence for the metal-induced calcifying degeneration of CNS theory. </p>

<p>Anyway, up 'til now, I’ve gathered data on 3 out of the 10 windows. So far, they don’t support the theory but everything is pretty inconclusive- I mean much more research is required. </p>

<p>ANYWAY (jeez I talk so much, please bear with me)</p>

<p>I want to send it to MIT so that they can see that I do do something with my time and interest in ALS. But at the same time, I don’t know if they’ll just… I don’t know… I mean is not professional, there’s not enough evidence, I am still working on it. I just want them to see that hey, it may not be Intel, but I am so interested in the disease and medical research in general that I would spend my entire senior year mapping out the mineral compositions of high-ALS-incidence areas. Because I feel this… this something… that makes me absolutely passionate about scientific research. And I want them to see it. </p>

<p>But again, it’s no huge thing. I am pretty sure they’d probably seen hundreds more impressive. </p>

<p>Should I sent it in???</p>

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<p>I think it’s often more impressive to MIT and other colleges to see an applicant take initiative and do research on his or her own with limited resources. They are definitely aware that many formal research opportunities for high schoolers arise because of connections – mom knows somebody who has a lab at the local university, that kind of thing. Doing your own research like this shows that you’re really taking advantage of the resources you have, and I think it’s great.</p>

<p>Marilee Jones used to say that MIT was looking for kids who built crazy things in their basements – that MIT was looking for people who did creative things on their own time. They’re not just looking for polished projects, they’re looking for sheer joy in the scientific experience.</p>

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<p>That sounds like a really good epidemeology project, and the fact that you did it all independently shows initiaive and scientific talent.</p>

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<p>Molllie, are you sure that it is more impressive to colleges that applicants do work on their own? I mean I did a project in my bedroom that studied the probability for photons to undergo quantum tunneling and produced a model to predict the probability. I got awards from like Jacobs engineering, the american physics society and 4th at a regional science fair, but it is not like Intel or Siemen’s. I sent in my research paper (16 pages) to one of my colleges and my abstract to two others, but I had been nervous. Hopefully what you say is true.</p>

<p>To the OP, the only problem that I sew with your work is that I do not know how you can have tangelible data, from a non-experimental study. If you have plotted tangible data then I would definitely say send it in. I think what independent research does more than anything is show that you have pursued a passion outside of high school, which I think many colleges will definitely respect.</p>

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<p>The purpose of the admissions officers in looking at research done by applicants is not really to judge the quality of the research, it’s to judge the amount of effort the applicant put in, the amount the applicant’s thinking that was required, and what the applicant learned from the experience, that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean that an independent project is automatically superior to one done in a research facility, but it certainly means that independent projects have a lot going for them.</p>

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<p>Oh my gosh that is SOOOOO great. I was really down bc I did not do research at a university (although I did have to use an advance quantum mechanics book to learn the stuff), but thanks mollie I really appreciate hearing this. Hopefully Yale applies the same metrics as MIT.</p>