I’m planning to apply to Harvard, and I was wondering if I should wait until RD as my scientific paper will be published in a relatively prestigious journal in early Feb. Does putting “submitted to journal” vs “published” make that much of a difference?
@ipodtouch129 How sure are you of the publication date? Published status is significant, if a prestigious journal.
Is this a peer reviewed journal? Are you lead author? Has it definitely been accepted for publication?
Yes, there is a big difference.
“Submitted to journal” doesn’t carry much weight, because anyone can submit a paper to a journal. However, “accepted for publication” is impressive, especially if the journal is the most prominent in your research field. It’s also impressive because it’s pretty darn difficult for a HS kid to get research published in a peer-reviewed journal before college applications are due.
If you or your mentor have already been notified by the journal editor that your paper has been accepted for publication, you can ask him/her what the anticipated month of publication, volume, edition, and page numbers will be. You can then put that info in your application, with the word “anticipated” in front.
I am unsure of the publication date, but my PI thinks it’s likely to be accepted and the journal’s median submission-publication time falls in early December. (I would be a co-author) I understand that there is a difference between “submitted” vs “accepted for publication”. However, would that difference be significant enough to make me wait until RD to submit my Harvard application? Or should I just submit EA ?
No one can say for certain. There is an ancillary issue…
Harvard is Single Choice Early Action (SCEA), not unrestricted EA, so if you apply to Harvard in the early round, you are prohibited from applying to any other private university at that time. There are CC threads on the benefits (or lack thereof) of applying to an SCEA university – some get an inordinate number of athletes, legacies, etc. in the early round, so the “bump” from applying early is debatable for SCEA universities like Harvard.
Why Harvard? You mentioned that your paper is “scientific.” A scientific paper accepted by a “relatively prestigious journal” would likely be more influential for Caltech, MIT, HMC, CMU, etc. admissions. Caltech and MIT have unrestricted EA admissions, so they would be good choices for the early round.
You could apply to Caltech and MIT in the EA round (even if your paper has not been formally accepted for publication) and still apply to Harvard in the RD round, which would give you more time to garner acceptance of your paper for the journal.
Just because you submit a paper doesn’t mean it will be accepted right away. Usually the peer review process requires several rounds of revisions. It’s late August now. For it to be published in time for it to make a difference you’d need it by early March at the latest.
But keep in mind that a single publication won’t necessarily be a show stopper. There are plenty of science fair kids who have 1-2 pubs by the time they apply. I imagine that Harvard gets a lot of applications from these type of kids.
If the paper is in a field where co-authorship is given out easily for doing grunt work (typically the lab sciences/experimental work) I don’t think it’s so impressive that you should wait for RD.