I am a senior currently. I have won a few awards at Intel ISEF and I am trying to get research published. The problem is I’m too late for highly prestigious journals; they take months or years to review your manuscript and get it published. I have submitted my work to two Journals that are focused on high school science only, and publishing high school work. How will the AO view this? Will they think that this is stupid or meaningless or “im taking the easy way out” because publishing in a high school journal is much easier than publishing in a more prestigious journal?
Publishing is not a tip. Writing something of academic value that gets vetted by professionals and qualifies as of interest to other adult professionals is a nice achievement. But not a tip.
@lookingforward Ok thanks! What do you mean by tip?
A tip is less than a hook, but “might” push you ahead of others. Adcoms know most kids who write and publish are not yet grad level researchers. They understand many research situations involve a lot of mentoring from the adults, not the sort of more fully independent work that, say, a grad student does for the final PhD thesis.
If you do have some very real achievements, they would speak for themselves. (And it’s up to you to understand what any competitive target looks for. Not just academics.) Frankly, what we often say is it’s fine to note a paper completed, that you have submitted for review.
If you’re going for competitive colleges, know the holistic qualities they want. They like depth and breadth, nice kids who also get along with others, have perspective, do some good around them. It’s not all about the glossy accomplishments.
Publishing is a plus as it shows that one is able to express thoughts in a clear & concise manner. Effective communication skills are important in all aspects of life.
Is there a scientific conference coming up that is accepting paper or poster submissions in your research field? The timeline for getting published that way is a lot shorter than for journals. Talk to your mentor to find out if there are conferences the group plans to attend.
Anecdote: My son had 2 co-author publications in a “Proceedings” type journal during HS. (He wasn’t able to go present at the time of the conference, but some of the team did.) The papers were mostly based on research during his junior year in HS and were published in time for college applications.
This past summer (after freshman year of college) he did some planetary science research and has already given a poster session at a prestigious conference in his field and received praise on the research from one of the main funding decision-makers in the field. He will write a paper or 2 based on some further data processing he needs to run, but that will take longer to publish.