<p>Just curious.</p>
<p>First year applicant here; so not in a position to provide an exact answer.</p>
<p>I, however, did not submit one. Mostly because research projects or internships/summer school/anything of the likes, is nonexistent in my country.</p>
<p>Hopefully give you an answer come March.</p>
<p>None were submitted by me. Not every student has the opportunity to do research, and Caltech recognizes that. They love it when a kid seeks out such, but most highschoolers have no chance to do any meaningful research unless they have connections. Don’t worry about it!!</p>
<p>I also did not submit any, but I made a huge deal about how much I’ve wanted to do research in my essays.</p>
<p>Accepted early, absolutely no research sent or even mentioned…I had done an internship though (no research, just paper-pushing type work) and had a letter from that professor.</p>
<p>Same deal as boredrunner 
Research is in no way critical.</p>
<p>My S was an intern in a chemistry lab at a large research university for two summers and got an outstanding recommendation from his professor, and will be named, on an upcoming paper, but did not do independent research, if that is what you are talking about. It is not clear from your question.</p>
<p>My son was accepted EA and did not send in a research project. He hasn’t done any research projects, nor did he mention research in any of his essays.</p>
<p>I got accepted EA to Caltech, and did not send any research in. In fact, I didn’t send anything extra at all (no extra reccomendation letters, etc). Research is not necessary, as they have themselves stated! :)</p>
<p>I had research but I decided not to send it in because it didn’t seem to be on par with what other ppl were sending, but I still got in EA.</p>
<p>You might want to clarify what level/type of research you mean. One might consider it to be working in a research lab at a university or writing an extended “research” paper for IB. But on the other hand, in the real world research generally involves discovering and publishing a previously undiscovered idea, formula or theory that contributes to collective human knowledge.</p>
<p>What would be “on par” with what other applicants are sending?</p>
<p>I didn’t send in any research, and have never worked in a lab or done anything related to scientific research in my life, and I still got in regular decision :).</p>
<p>Send it in if its actually publishable work.</p>
<p>thanks for the helpful responses, everyone!</p>
<p>But what do you mean by publishable? Because as a high school student, obviously not everything publishable is going to be published.</p>
<p>If you worked in a lab, a letter of recommendation from your research mentor works fine. It helps your application a lot to have a university prof who can attest to your interest in science and ability to contribute to the lab’s projects or independently pursue your own research ideas. Of course, if you did publish a paper, you can send that in, but it certainly does not take a publication to get admitted to Tech for undergrad.</p>
<p>Does it have to be “hard sciences”? Can it be a social sciences project?</p>
<p>If I want to do Physics at Caltech, do I have to do an intense research project on Physics in order to have a reasonable shot?</p>
<p>friend got waitlisted but he didnt have a rsearch project</p>
<p>I have not done any research. Not only did I get accepted EA, but Caltech flew me out once already and is doing so again for PFW (not at all needs-based). I wasn’t even aware they did anything like that. The most impressive single thing in my application was participating in national chemistry Olympiad, but qualification for that is only on a state basis. From what I’ve seen it looks like less than half of the people who get accepted have done any research.</p>