Sorry if you saw this in the College Admissions thread, I put it in the wrong place so reposting here! 
I’m planning to email professors nearby (I’m in the DC area so probably profs at UVA or VTech) about working with them over the summer in an unpaid internship. I’m interested in the CS field, but having only taken APCS, I’m absolutely lost when I look at their research projects. And I don’t really know how to email them.
So here are my questions:
- As mere high school students, are we supposed to be able to understand what the heck is going on in the research? Because let’s be real, how many high school students would really be able to understand and help out “Automatic Techniques for Evaluating and Hardening Machine Learning Classifiers in the Presence of Adversaries”? I have no idea what that even means, let alone how I could possibly be of use… so i’m kind of questioning how high school students do research and what exactly professors expect high school interns/lab assistants to be doing.
- I read a lot of threads on how to email professors, but I’m stuck on coming up with project ideas I could propose or just how I can talk about my interests when I’m just interested in really broad things like software engineering, mobile app development, computer programming, etc.
- I’m afraid if I over-state how much I know in my email, they’ll expect me to know more than I actually do and then like kick me out later because I can’t keep up. But I’ve heard that if you don’t advocate for your own capabilities, no one will.
- Can you guys give me opinions on the email I’ve crafted so far through PM?
Thank you soo much!
I think an internship in computer science might be tough. Try teaching yourself R (statistical analysis software). Then approach science/social science professors and express in interest in the application of computers to research. My daughter did research in genetics and used R and Perl.
Look at mysummeradvisor.com for a list of research opportunities for high school students. Look at the ones through the US Navy. They may have something at Naval facilities around Maryland.
@BelleofAmherst Was your daughter able to teach herself R and Perl, or did her supervisors help her with that? I was thinking computer science internships would be pretty difficult if I didn’t have a ton of experience, but I’ve also heard that professors don’t really expect high school interns to know much.
AP CS is a tiny tip of a huge iceberg - it’s simply too early for you to be of use to them. They could easily get help from any students at their school studying computer science if they wanted it, who even having a single class would probably have many advantages over hiring you. It’s nothing against you at all, of course.
While it may be a good way to get experience programming, this is not a good way to get experience in computer science. R is almost exclusively used in research these days, and the way it is used is very different from most software development and even computer science research. Perl has a bit more general use but is still very dated and has been surpassed by Python on most of its use cases.
If you want to work on CS stuff for your own benefit, do some projects on your own. Make a game, a website, anything. Learn a new language that’s useful for said project. At this point, working in research or industry really isn’t possible yet unless you have a direct connection that is okay hiring and mentoring you.
You could try speaking with your AP CS teacher, who might have some contacts with universities or companies. My son’s CS teacher has helped him and other students get internships.
@PengsPhils Thank you for your advice! I’ve thought about it and honestly I think I would probably be more of a burden than a help in the lab, particularly with my severe lack of inexperience. I’m currently looking into summer programs I can apply to such as NIH SIP that are down the bioinformatics track, simply because pure computer science research probably involves a reallyyyy good grasp of the field, and I’m not even near that yet. But bioinformatics research seems doable, with a mentor of course. Do you happen to have any suggestions for programs such as SIP?
@traveler98 thanks, I’ll try that as well but somehow I don’t think my CS teacher is going to be particularly connected haha she’s kind of bad at English 
I don’t know that world, so I couldn’t say. I will say that any sort of research will require at least years of college or will be so basic such that you won’t really learn much. At that point, you’d be much better doing other things. I do second the suggestion to ask your professor. I don’t think how well they speak has any correlation to connections in industry in my experience, that’s not really a fair judgement.
How about trying to find a summer job instead? My relative who currently studies CS had a job with his church doing some computer-related work for the church school. Agree that getting a job helping professors is not likely.
It would be the rare professor who has time to answer such an email, I should think, unless you have some other connection.
I’ve worked with researchers at my local universities before, and I agree that most professors don’t initially expect you to be very knowledgeable in regards to their research. They will expect you to have the fundamentals of programming, etc. down, but in general, professors will be very willing to guide and teach you about their ongoing projects (albeit in a slightly dumbed-down version) and allow you to do more basic lab work as well as observe them conduct higher level experiments.
I really think that you should try and email professors at your local colleges and express your interests in computer science in general because the opportunity to learn about and observe research like this was a huge experience for me and I gained a lot. But don’t overstate your abilities because they will expect a lot more out of you than you’ll be able to accomplish. Be sincere, and really relay your genuine interests in their field and hopefully a researcher will take you in!
Also, you should probably include like masters students in your email, like “I’m extremely interested in the computer science field and would really love the opportunity to work with you and your graduate students on your research…”
@michigox Hm. I feel like they would only give the time of day to high school students who are accomplished enough to help them out in the lab. If I gave an honest assessment of myself, it would probably be just proficient. Not really good or anything. But I am still considering emailing professors, because I need to have a backup in case my summer programs don’t work out Do you mind PM’ing me the email you sent to your prof if you still have it? I’m not too sure about how mine should look.
@CheddarcheeseMN If I get rejected from both professors and summer programs, my last resort is probably to find some small startup and try to get a job there, or maybe open-source although I’ve never tried that. I don’t know if it’s a good idea but might as well haha