<p>I want to be able to participate in a competitive summer program the summer after my junior year (science or math, preferably). I am taking the most difficult classes available to me and more and I am pretty sure I got 220+ on the October PSAT. I think I would fit in well with some of these programs such as SSP, Clark Scholars, etc but want to know what I should do now, as a sophomore, to help in admission to such programs later. Unfortunately, my school does not participate in any Olympiads :(</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>you might consider doing research in a lab at a university</p>
<p>(you would be doing the same at many of these summer programs too)</p>
<p>research can be very good for a resume, especially if your group publishes something, and even if you don’t get published you’ll get a letter of recommendation</p>
<p>and doing research would probably improve your chances at those programs too, but i wouldn’t know</p>
<p>anyway i did research in high school and had a very good experience</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply!</p>
<p>I definitely would like to participate in research, but I really don’t know when to start. I’ve never done research before, what is recommended for beginners?</p>
<p>We don’t have any local research universities…</p>
<p>biology, they could always use a couple extra hands in the lab.</p>
<p>maybe email professors who aren’t so local? i did research at caltech over the summer despite living in florida, you just have to find a place to live. you might try emailing professors who have a lot of undergrads (check their websites) since their attitude towards undergrads probably carries over to high school students. also you probably want to email like eight of them, but make sure you can convey passion about each one. also if you can program you might want to let them know because a lot of research involves programming depending where you work.</p>