My birthday is in early August, and most of the summer research/lab programs require a certain age in order to participate. I can’t meet the requirement in June, so I can’t participate until the next summer. Do colleges/medical schools consider the fact that I have a late birthday so I don’t have as many lab hours or research experience? Am I just at a disadvantage? Many of the kids in my grade have birthdays during the school year and are able to do the programs, having additional lab/research experience time.
There are plenty of research and lab programmes that don’t require you to be 18+ or whatever age. Such age restrictions may be liability-related, but you should email the people in charge of the programme. Also, many programmes say “you must be a rising senior/junior/whatever”, in which case, age wouldn’t be a problem. Just email them, tell them your age, birthday, grade, etc., and see if they’ll make an exception. My birthday is in late September and I’m younger than all my classmates, but I’ve never had an issue with exceptions to age requirements.
Yeah, I’ve applied to (and done) a couple of these types of programs from a few organizations, and all of them use grade level instead of age.