<p>As a high schooler involved in research, I totally agree with differential. For one thing, it's really not that difficult to tell how involved a student was in their "research" by simply asking them some basic questions about it. </p>
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At young ages, I think it is more important for kids to be focusing on basic fundamentals of science than advanced research. They should be really learning about things a lot less sophisticated but in greater depth. That will result in greater creativity later on in life. Lets not forget that many great scientific innovators in the American tradition weren't tremendously advanced in school. Some were even poor students. They should be learning about the abstract principles that govern life much more so that they have greater creativity later on in life. Such specific research at high school age--no matter how knowledgeable a student is, will cause tunnel vision. A lot of great American innovations did not come from exceptionally prolific students. People always need to have purpose and grounding for putting so much effort into such a precise medium like getting all As and 5s in 7 AP classes.
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<p>I really, really, REALLY disagree with this. Here's a few reasons:
1. "At young ages, I think it is more important for kids to be focusing on basic fundamentals of science than advanced research." I will only agree with this if "young ages" is defined to be "under 15 or 16." I think after that point, students have reached the level of maturity to be able to consider problems on their own and begin exploring for their own research.
2. "They should be really learning about things a lot less sophisticated but in greater depth." In many subjects, that's difficult to do, period. In mathematics, analysis classes typically taken by college freshmen and sophomores go back and redo all of calculus from a much more theoretical perspective. Doing analysis in the first place would, among other things, a) lose you students who dislike theory, a common problem even among math majors, and b) may well overwhelm even smart students. Sophistication and depth are two terms with a lot of overlap. Interestingly enough, I feel like I should point out that in mathematics, going into ANY subject with lots of depth can get you to the cutting edge of research scarily quickly, especially in up-and-coming fields.
3. "Some were even poor students. They should be learning about the abstract principles that govern life much more so that they have greater creativity later on in life." This is, er, misdirected at best. Good researchers, in my experience, often paid as much attention in classes unrelated to their fields of interest as to their favorite subject. Going into more depth and breadth in any subject tends to give students greater perspective, period. That's been my experience throughout life -- I gain perspective from teachers in ANY subject that really go deep and broad.
4. "By the time a student is 16 or 17, that allows for that 10 year time period for them to really nail it on the head if they are to do something big. That is the time when they should have the chance to do some research in addition to mastering the fundamentals." This is...ridiculous. People who start doing research at a young age gain perspective, a feel for their subject, depth, and creativity, and it stays with them the rest of their lives.
5. "Such specific research at high school age--no matter how knowledgeable a student is, will cause tunnel vision." This is absolutely ridiculous. The people I know who do intensely focused research are also the people I know who can instantly and seamlessly transition from mathematical discussions to political debates to abstract philosophical discussions, and are the best-grounded people I know. The people I know who don't do such research are much less sure about what they'll do in the world, worried about their futures, unsure of what to expect, and less interested in branching out to any field at all.
6. "People always need to have purpose and grounding for putting so much effort into such a precise medium like getting all As and 5s in 7 AP classes." This is the most ridiculous statement of all. You clearly haven't been reading College Confidential at ALL to realize that these students are, as often as not, only doing these things to satisfy their parents' desire to maximize their sons' and daughters' statistical profiles, because the parents don't know any other way to impress colleges. I can think of fifteen or twenty students I know off the top of my head who "get all As and 5s in 7 AP classes" and couldn't care less about their futures, their classes, or their own interests.</p>
<p>Perhaps I'm a bit biased due to the fact that I'm a high school researcher, in a field that's relatively new and wide open, that can truly (and literally, in my case) be done in one's backyard, and I'm doing truly original research. I know a lot of people in the same boat. In some areas, especially biology and physics, it IS a whole lot more difficult to get original research that is truly yours, especially in one's backyard -- often you can only hop on to an existing research project at a research institution and hope to be able to pass it off as largely your own. That said, new results in biology and physics can be the result of simple luck -- a friend of mine accidentally created a new and interesting mutation in his (nonhuman) research subjects, and the lab was able to reconstruct his results from his research journal. He got full credit for that. Engineering is a bit trickier, but of all subjects offers perhaps the most room for creativity. Computer science research depends largely on what you're doing and how much experience you have -- after learning to program at a young age, which many people do, you can begin looking at the more abstract concepts of computer science, and working on the prototypical problem of computer science, "Is there a neat/ingenious/innovative way to attack this particular problem? How could that be implemented? Is its efficiency comparable to or better than known algorithms for the problem?" Personally, I think anything more theoretical than that in computer science (e.g. figuring out how to show you CAN'T attack a problem any faster than some rate) is mathematics rather than computer science. Mathematics is wholly dependent on what subfield you're working in -- some fields require little more than high school algebra, rudimentary combinatorics, and a flexible and intelligent mind, while others require concerted effort and study long enough to be able to glance over very complicated details. (That isn't to say that you should skip over such details in mathematical research, rather, that you must study until those details become natural.)</p>