I recently got accepted for a research project that starts in January of 2017 (the middle of my senior year) and runs through the summer until I go to college.
Can I put that on my application in the Fall? (E.g. Some colleges like UPenn or Columbia have “Research Supplements”)
Sure, why not? Just be sure to include that it will start in January so they know it hasn’t started yet. It’s impressive that you were selected for the position, and you can talk about how excited you are for the opportunity because you’ll be doing what you love, bla bla. You can also talk about what you’ll be researching and why that specific thing interests you, in addition to possible outcomes of the research- like if it is cancer research, you could say that this is an early step in finding the cure for cancer or something. Not sure if you could write a whole paper on it (I believe that you submit a document under the ‘research supplement’ section) considering you haven’t actually done it yet… But regardless, you should at least have it in your resume!