<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>I figured the best place to post this message would be here at the Caltech forums rather than the summer program forums.</p>
<p>I am currently a junior in high school. I have plans for the summer; I managed to get a computer science internship at a company nearby. However, my primary interest is physics, not CS. My dream-come-true would be to be an intern or assistant to a Caltech physics professor. A friend of mine told me to email "random physics professors at Caltech" to ask for an internship. However, I'm pretty sure this decision isn't too wise.</p>
<p>So my main question is how do I approach a Tech Prof asking for an internship/show interest in being an assistant? Although I'm a hs student, I'm seriously passionate about physics.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it a lot.</p>
<p>Since it's this close to the summer (school ends June 13), your friend is right. Look through various research groups, find one that interests you, and email the profs.</p>
<p>In your e-mail, be sure to include specific things about their particular research and why it's interesting to you so they know it's not a general forum message. Also, be aware that lots of professors are very poor about responding to non-urgent e-mails in a timely manner. When I was doing grad school searching and e-mailing professors I'd occasionally get responses 2-3 weeks after I sent my original message.</p>
<p>I don't know if you can expect to be paid in any way for working here for the summer, though.</p>
<p>You might want to also look at departments related to physics here, since many groups do physics related research even if they're not directly in the department. For example, I'm in Materials Science, but a lot of professors here do things that could easily fall into Applied Physics.</p>
<p>Thanks RacinReaver and jdhutchin for the advice.</p>
<p>I emailed about 5 professors. 2 replied and told me they didn't have any more space left as they had too many undergraduates. Still waiting on the others haha.</p>