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?
I think your initiative is admirable, but I’d encourage you to first look for an introduction through a mutual 3rd party rather than just emailing unknown profs out of the blue. There are lots of advantages to this approach – you are more likely to be taken seriously with someone to vouch for you, that third party may be able to help you set expectations, etc. Start with the guidance counselor at your high school (“I was wondering if you might know of any local CS professors who tend to be open to high school interns, or if you could help me find the right person to talk to, if you don’t”), and/or your APCS teacher (particularly if you did well in the class), then work any connections your parents or parents of friends may have. If all of those avenues turn into dead ends, sure, you can just email folks, but I’d highly recommend pursing an introduction rather than just emailing people. Good luck!
Certainly you can try and I wish you good luck in finding something. But be sure to have a Plan B in case things don’t work out.
Do any of these schools have programs set up for HS students to work on campus? Do you have a relationship/know any of these professors? If not I can’t imagine why a prof. would have an unknown HS student come and do research when they can almost certainly get one of their college or grad students.
@happy1 I don’t believe they do have programs set up for HS students, but emailing professors to get an independent research position isn’t unheard of. Also, some students act as assistants to research, and the university doesn’t necessarily fund their independent research. I’ve heard that professors accept HS students because they don’t have to pay, or because they show more initiative and are more enthusiastic than undergrads (probably because they had the initiative to email first). This is actually my current Plan B, my Plan A is applying to some summer programs, but since they’re really competitive I wanted to have a backup thing to do with my summer. Hopefully both plans don’t fail…