@ecouter11 i am really enjoying hearing your perspective. i work in a university research setting and sometimes high school students find my research online and email me. i always respond and try to be helpful, whether the level of scientific understanding is good, bad or ugly. i believe that many scientists are friendly although i know that some are not. you are right when you suggest that they “stay positive”. i also liked the responses that the OP got from teachers. as a parent i have actually received similar responses, especially the second response.
ecouter11, my son followed your advise. He needs to work in a project for his science class. It’s for the school science fair. He wrote and sent a letter to several professors at a local university describing the type of research he’s interested in. Something related to “good” viruses that destroy “bad” bacteria. He got the emails from their website and he got many replies. Most couldn’t help him but there was a professor that wrote back saying that he has been researching this topic since 1967. He invited my son to his office and we had a discussion with him for about an hour. Now he reserved lab space and invited him to do the research there. My son is very excited. I’m glad to know that there are academics that are interested to helping the younger generations.
Thanks for your suggestions ecouter11
I’m glad to know there are academics that are interested in helping the younger generations, in a time where everything is done for money…
Congratulations to both you, and especially your son, for sending the emails. @smithonian29 I wish him the best for the experience! @thingamajig I am definitely grateful to people like you. I really think having the chance to see the exciting work that people do ‘in the field’ is what has powered me through lots of rote general science classes. Honestly, I think getting a chance to see and do hands on work is a big part of what draws anyone to a career.
ecouter11, today my son is having his 4th and final session with the college professor we contacted by email. He’s a senior lecturer and is also enjoying working with my son in his lab. Yesterday we went to his office to analyze some results from last weekend inoculation of bacteriophage and e-coli. They got the results they expected. So the experiment was a success. My son learned about pipetting, test tubes, agar, petri dishes, etc. and how to handle them and how to analyze the results. He’s going to present it at his school science fair next month. A great experience that both of them enjoyed. My son gave him a little gift: “The Gene: An Intimate History” from Siddhartha Mukherjee with a thank you note. I took pictures of his lab work.
Now my son has plans to expand on this experiment in the near future.
It was definitely a good idea to contact academics at our local university.
My daughter had a regular babysitting gig for a French-speaking family at that age. It paid much better than other jobs for teens, and was intellectually stimulating because it helped her improve her French.
Smart kids can turn even lowly jobs like shelving books into an enriching activity. It just requires some imagination.
At 14 my daughter had already been talking about medicine for a number of years. She liked dissections and she liked chemistry, so it didn’t come out of nowhere. That summer she was old enough to volunteer at our local hospital. She got there on her own by taking the train. It was the first time that a pursuit was totally her thing. She developed a real fondness for some of the older people and made it her job to entertain them as she delivered books, flowers or pushed them in a wheelchair. She ended up liking it enough that she continued with it during the following school year. It had nothing to do with being a doctor and was often boring but she did see the layers of hospital care and developed some empathy for the patients. She played lacrosse and tennis during the summer months so there was outdoor time as well.
During D’s high school summers she did a little science, studied to skip a grade in math, upped her conversational French game, earned money working at a tennis camp, and volunteered at a tennis program for inner city kids. She ended up at an ivy - it was a good fit but I only mention it because it is so important to some people as an academic standard- and an ivy medical school without having spent every summer in a lab.
The one thing I would tell the parent of a child thinking about medicine is to let them lead the way. Help them set things up but medicine is a life rather than a job and it needs to come from them. Doctors need people skills, stamina and a sense of purpose. That is all stuff a kid can be exposed to through any summer job, participating in sports or pursuing any academic passion…and not just in the sciences.
I have bored you with all of the above because I really do believe that with medicine some gentle exposure and help in setting up what THEY-want-to-do is fine but the decision to go down that path has to come from the child. It is too hard and too long a process. I would not have chosen this for my D initially but now I am totally on board…she is happy with her work, her peers, and her career trajectory.
Though she would have been a great lawyer (the kid can argue!), D had a bit too much exposure to the law. During middle and high school she would often go to her father’s office to do homework as a way of spending time with him when he was working late. After hearing his interactions on the phone and learning about his work over time, she said, “No way!”. 
The US Naval Academy offers a competitive Summer Stem Program, that’s reasonably priced at like $500. It’s not medicine or an internship, but could be a really neat experience for a kid who likes science. My child attended last summer and enjoyed it. Also, check your local hospital. Ours offers opportunities for 9th grade and up. Good luck with your search.
Thank you somemomma.
I’m late responding, but once your son gets to a point where resumes actually matter, nobody is gonna care about what he did at 14 unless that’s something he has been doing consistently for years.
@somemomma – My son also went to USNA Summer Stem. Although the camp is reasonably priced you have to add in air fare which for a 4 day camp pushes it to about $1000 for some areas of the country. That said, my son loved it.
@CaliCash – I could not disagree with you more. At 17, a student is going to fill out an application and there are only 3 summers of EC’s that he will be able to add. In my opinion, everything a child does from the moment they step into high school to the moment they apply to college is all part of your college app and is highly relevant.
This is not only my opinion, this is also the opinion of the Air Force Academy. They have a middle school program that provides guidelines on how to approach your high school years to put your best foot forward to apply to the USAFA.
@smithonian29 – I read the first 6 pages of people beating you up and then my ADHD kicked in and I went right to the end. I am wondering if you have chosen a summer program for your rising freshman?
@laenen Lol, I literally said “nobody is gonna care about what he did at 14 unless that’s something he has been doing consistently for years.” At 17, then sure it makes sense. At 22 applying to med school, no one is gonna care about something you did at 14, especially if you didn’t carry it through college.
I’ll add another condition. If you cure cancer at 14, they will care.
@CaliCash – To get into med school or another competitive grad program, you have to have a solid undergrad experience. To get into a solid undergrad you have to have a solid HS record. Your EC’s do NOT have to be consistent they just have to prove valuable for the next stage that you are applying to.
My point is the 14 year old internship is directly relevant to your Undergrad app. From the moment you step into undergrad for the next 4 years will be relevant for your grad school app.
Your post dismisses out of hand all 14 year old experience and I do not have that same opinion. One’s 14 year old internship/summer program might be the item that gets you into Andover which now increases your chances to get into HADES.
After my son took USNA Stem at 14 and 1 month, he went on to get his glider’s license through the Air Force Aux (CAP) and is now working on his flying license. In my opinion it had a huge impact on his high school acceptance and his 14 year old experience coupled with his flight license by 16 will have an impact on a ROTC program placement in 4 years. It is all about building on top of other EC’s and not just flipping a switch at 16 or 17 because it is application time.
@laenen Did I say it won’t have an impact?
I agree with @Calicash on this one. I don’t think a 14 year olds internships mean much in the scheme of things unless of course you cure cancer
laenen, I’d like to thank you for understanding my point of view. In my initial post I was trying to find something that would support my child’s path to college. I was trying to find something good and relevant for him/her to do during the summer. Something related to his/her interests in STEM. Unfortunately, because of my English as a second language I used the words “internship” and “building the resume” and got lots of angry messages from american parents. Some parents are a little extremist in their point of view and if they find somebody that disagree they’ll try to prove you wrong any way they can. They think they “own the truth”. Some went to look at my other threads. In another thread I asked about Harvard med school. I don’t think my child will ever apply there. I don’t care, but I asked about Harvard because it’s a prestigious university and a good reference. But some parents thought I wanted to pressure my child to go there. When I mentioned that my child was going to CTY then some assumed that I chose CTY because I wanted to use it to have my child go to Harvard. Even a CTY staff member had to post in this thread to say that CTY is not for going to Harvard. Things got really crazy.
Fortunately I found lots of parents wanting to be helpful and gave me great advise that has been key in my child’s recent successes.
Here are my updates: thanks to a parent’s suggestion in this thread my child started to send emails to science professors in a local university. One professor accepted to give my child access to his lab to do research with bacteria and viruses for his/her science project. Then all the domino pieces started to fall one after the other. My child won his/her school science fair, then he/she won the district science fair, then got 2nd place in the regional science fair and then went to participate in the state science fair. It was a great experience! Now thanks to this experience and his/hers good grades and teacher references he/she got accepted for a 2 week biology camp at a local hospital with all cost covered by different sponsors. My child will work in the hospital labs everyday. If he/she does good then next year he/she can do a summer research there. Several students from that summer research program went to med school last year (if that’s what my child wants to do).
I do believe it’s important to start at an early age to build our children skills in a relevant subject because as you said, they have only about 3 years before they already start applying for college. I have nothing against working in a bakery during summer. This teach them how to be responsible, how to deal with customers, billing, technical issues such as how to bake bread, etc. But there are also other paths for our children. Nothing is right or wrong, it depends in what the child wants to do.
Kids should also be reminded that lowly, mind-numbing, poorly paid jobs can sometimes lead to much greater things, so it’s always important to do one’s best and take pride in one’s work.
Many years ago my father used to get his car washed once a week and the guy who toweled off the car was always efficient and polite, and left the car spotless. My dad was so impressed he offered him a job in the warehouse of his new company. Through hard work this man rose through the ranks and today he’s a well-respected Vice President of a company with close to a half billion dollars in annual sales.