I guess what I’m I’m trying to say is that for every STEM kid with heavy research there is probably another that took a different route. Even within a given school I have seen kids with totally different ECs get in to the most highly selective schools, ivy and other.
My MIT kid had not a single STEM related EC. He loved math–but other than classroom experiences had no lab work, no robotics/programming/etc. He had a lot of interests which were not science related (and I think did a good job of summarizing why they were part of who he was) but not a single “EC” that you could point to which screamed “STEM”.
He did have work experience- fast food, pushing a broom, handling a cash register and nasty customers (and some nice ones) which didn’t seem to hurt him during admissions. Many of his friends at MIT also had similar minimum wage type jobs. And a VERY popular college part time job was working as an EMT (not for the science, but for the cash- it pays well in both Boston and Cambridge, apparently).
Adcom’s understand that college is expensive and that kids need to do their part for their families- it can’t all be glamourous stuff.
“Adcom’s understand that college is expensive and that kids need to do their part for their families- it can’t all be glamourous stuff.”
I also think they recognize that 99.9% of high school students doing “internships” in labs aren’t doing a whole heck of a lot while there, at least not tasks that a bright college student couldn’t pick up in a few hours.
On the issue of affording really cool summer programs for high school students. There are LOTS of programs that offer scholarships. Depending on where you live, there may be some super generous ones too. My daughter attended several different summer programs, none of which we paid for. We aren’t in that income bracket either!
If you live in the midwest, send me a PM and i will tell you about one program in particular.
If your daughter attends a high school with a counselor who actually would refuse to support an application under certain circumstances (not sure what that means, just looking at the quote) - then perhaps she will meet with you and your daughter one on one to offer guidance. Find a time when she is not super busy, like after the application deadlines are passed (early in the new year). She will want to help a talented student be successful.
The OP is in California, and state universities (UCs and CSUs) do not require any counselor recommendations or support to apply, so a counselor who has weird ideas about internships being required in high school cannot veto a student’s application to them.
My kid’s high school had a similar science research program to what JHS describes. It started freshman year with kids reading tons of scientific papers (first at Scientific American level, then real papers) and writing a summary of ten of them a week. The guy in charge was ill the year my kid was a freshman, and from what I could see actually provided very little guidance. My kid liked physics and computer science and dutifully wrote the summaries. By the end of first semester my kid had had enough. There was very little feedback and it was clear we were going to have to figure out what sort of project our kid would do. For complicated reasons - the course never appeared on his transcript so he just bailed. I spent the next three years worrying about whether what my kid was doing instead would be considered as good as “science research”. In the end he got into a great school for him, he got rejected by other places that would also have been good, including the one he thought was his first choice. (Given that no one got in there his year, though a young woman was on the waitlist, I have to think it probably didn’t matter. And since he was miserable, I’m glad we let him drop it. My only regret, was that he was also not interested in doing the research to get a concurrent masters, since he would have had to do research and write something up, and he’d been convince by that freshman year experience he wouldn’t like it.) He did do Science Olympiad, Academic Team and a wide variety of computer programming projects on his own, as a volunteer and for pay.
No kidding. I do chemistry research in an academic lab. We sometimes hire interns from the local high schools (usually they’re the dean’s grandchildren…) to wash glassware. Maybe they get to run a safe, easy reaction, but usually that’s more trouble than it’s worth. One summer we had two interns inventory our lab’s chemical library - it took them 6 weeks to do what I could have done in 2 days.
I hate to sound like a grumpy old codger, but so far, the only good interns we’ve had were college juniors.
I had forgotten that my son volunteered 4-5 hours every other week in a paleontology lab for three years of high school. He adored it, and got a ton out of it. I doubt it helped at all with his college applications, even though he kinda sorta thought he was a STEM person at the time (as I said, at his school having good grades but not doing the formal research program signaled you weren’t really serious about STEM). But he learned a lot and it was completely worthwhile.
He started doing the equivalent of washing beakers and cataloging fragments, but he progressed pretty quickly to doing two actually useful things: gruntwork separating fossils from surrounding rock (dusty, dirty, boring work with power tools), and acting as a docent for younger kids visiting the lab. (Obviously, this was much less intensive than the daily work involved in the school’s formal research program.) What he got out of it was the chance to hang around a couple of actual scientists and their graduate students and listen to them talk about their work. He knew what they were working on, what they were interested in. He learned about politics in their institutions, and funding issues. They recommended books for him to read, and he read them, and then everyone talked about the books. (He went through a real Richard Dawkins phase because of this.)
In other words, doing the work he could do as a 16-year-old in an actual lab was a completely valuable educational experience, whether or not it any college cared about it. Of course he didn’t do anything that a smart college student couldn’t have learned in a couple of days. That wasn’t the point. He got role models other than (and very different from) his parents and his teachers. He learned all kinds of nitty-gritty stuff .about science and life.
Yes, I think seeing what life is like in a science lab and academia could be pretty eye opening!
My husband gets requests from time to time from high school students and has had the same experiences at @scout59, it often seems like way too much trouble!
People are correct that there is nothing your HS counselor needs to do related to applications to the UC (or CSU) system. They don’t send a transcript, school profile, or recommendation during the application phase. (Berkeley requests recommendations for some students after the application is submitted.)
It does seem odd that your counselor would say that a math or science major has this special requirement. For most colleges, majors like math, physics, chemistry, and biology are in a college called something like “Letters and Science” which has basically the same admissions selectivity for everything from physics to English. For the UCs, the majors in the College of Engineering (often including Computer Science) are harder to get into, but a lot of the “harder” part is still grades and test scores.
If she is interested in a science major, related activities like science/math clubs and competitions, tutoring, and building things are useful as ECs. I don’t see an internship as a requirement at all. (Though it could help her think about majors.)
Our HS does have an engineering program that connects some of its students with paid summer internships. The word around town is that the students are useful, though I think a lot of them are basically doing things like website updates and data analysis in Excel.
My son did work in a physics lab from 10th to 12th grade, but he was basically doing programming with some machining and hardware setup. He wasn’t doing what one would think of as actual “physics.” (He got the position by emailing the professor after a summer program for HS students where he worked on a CS project for a CS professor’s group, and that physics professor took other high school students in the program.)
But, he wouldn’t have been much of any use to them if he hadn’t been already proficient with Python and had learned machine shop and wiring through an engineering program at his HS. It was really useful to him, as he learned to work with lasers and vacuum systems and lots of programming tasks he wouldn’t have otherwise tried.
The professor did point him to some physics papers to read as background. Since he was taking Calc BC at the time, with some help from my husband, he could get through understanding (but not doing at that point) most of the multvariable calculus in the papers.
This is something I would suggest you share with your daughter. Letting her know how you understand that the process has apparently changed a lot since you went to school. While this is her journey, as a parent you want to help put her in a position to learn how to make the best decision for herself. She comes from a great privilege, being able to attend a private HS that you hope will meet her needs better than the public option. While she may not be as privileged as many of her peers, she may be better off than the vast majority of potential college applicants.
What encourages me the most from your posts is the following -
These are the main qualities that all of the top schools are looking for. This trumps any internship, because more than anything else they are a huge predictor of future success.
When these adjectives were used to describe my pups, I never tried to take credit for them, as credit is all goes to them. I remain more proud of them for these qualities over any of the grades, test scores, or academic awards they ever received.
Best of luck to you in this sometimes daunting process.
I have to agree that your GC is misinformed. If your daughter is looking to go to MIT or CalTech, for example, some serious (and I mean SERIOUS) internship or research might be helpful. But a kid from my son’s school got into CalTech and he had only done one independent research project. Nothing earth-shattering or world-changing, just showing that he is curious and motivated. And another kid got into MIT without any research/internship experience at ALL, though he was the state winner at a Science Fair and had been taking college STEM classes since 10th grade, having already completed all the math courses available at his school. Additionally, my son, though rejected from MIT, has gotten into every other college he applied to as a Physics major with absolutely ZERO internship experience! He did do an independent research project this year, but it was on nutritional biology and nothing related to his intended field of study. So far, he’s gotten into WPI, University of Delaware Honors College, Colby College, Boston College, and Hamilton College, ALL as a physics major. The reason he got in was more related to how excellent and meaningfully engaged a student he has been. Waiting on Ivies today and Tufts, all three of which are crapshoots for almost all but the absolute top students, internships or not. Both boys who got into MIT and CalTech got rejected from every Ivy they applied to, which goes to show you how capricious the Ivy admissions process can be, even for highly qualified students!
My D applied almost exclusively to small LACS most of them very competitive and some of them elite. She applied as a STEM major. All of her ECs were either music related (mostly though HS activities) and as well as her various afterschool jobs. She did not have a single internship or STEM related EC. She was accepted at all of them except one where she was waitlisted.
Moosie, I thought the Ivies don’t release decisions until 7:00 pm est
Oh please. My kid graduated from a plain old public high school. Applied undeclared but got a degree in engineering. NEVER had an “internship” in high school. Never!
But she did work as a lifeguard every summer.
That internship comment is not accurate. The VAST majority of HS grads will have regular jobs in the summers during HS, not “internships”
Two oldest children are engineering majors. Neither had work experience related to STEM or engineering. The ME was involved in robotics and other ECs with projects that showed interest in the ME/EE/CS fields. The CBE just had coursework aligned with interests and also took the suggestion from a college professor to take a Java course outside of school to complete her toolbox (boys are more likely to be self taught).
If a student has 32 semester long courses in high school, and they choose to take 10 core science and 7 math courses along with the AP scores, their commitment to a STEM education has been demonstrated. Their application is where they tell the rest of their story including their perseverance (a commitment to and leadership in what they enjoy, not a smattering of ECs without any depth).
I can’t picture companies with lots of high school interns…what would they do?? Who would babysit???
My kid has no internship experience and no lab research experience (she has done independent research). She hasn’t looked at her ivy results yet as she is at Emory interviewing for their scholars program. She is getting plenty of “yes” results (sure, some “no” and some waitlist). Maybe it is different in your state, but my daughter is doing fine without that.
Re mathmom #65: Having a high school student write summaries of 10 “real” physics papers a week sounds rather unrealistic to me. I suppose that the students could digest the plain English content, but how they would derive or analyze any of the results is beyond me. My grad students could not sensibly summarize 10 papers a week. Heck, some of my colleagues . . . well, let’s not go there.
I think there are better uses of your time/money than sending your kid to this school