@hs2020dad I don’t know. Just relaying our experience. Took ACT at school on 2/20. Got paper results via mail 4/19. Results were online about the same time (gave up looking online by 4/5 or so). I was shocked how long it took, but if you read the website, it says 2-8 weeks.
My older D is studying nursing and she is also involved in research as a freshmen. Her research project does not require advanced nursing skills. It is geared towards well being, health policy and such. It has been an amazing experience. It is about 10 hours a week and she gets a stipend. She does that with a full class load and a few more extracurricular activities because it is just in the building with the rest of her classes and a lot of work requires writing, presenting data etc. It is not hours and hours sitting in a lab. A nurse does not need “research” to be a fantastic nurse of course. But it is great for students that are thinking of grad school, want perhaps a more academic career etc. It is also great to get closer to mentors, hearing of other opportunities, getting LORs for scholarships other programs etc. It was not a number one priority in choosing schools but she knew any school she went she would try to pursue any available research opportunities.It worked well for her.
Tears/mild panic alert: Next May 1st it will be our DC that have made a decision and that may be going to school in their post-HS plans attire.
Right, @Cheeringsection, and this is my last one so I’m really going to have to brace myself. On the other hand, hooray hooray for May. Among other things, as S2 said over breakfast, “this month means the end of calculus in my life forever.” 
@HarrietMWelsch same here. D20 is my baby and today is her last calculus test ever. She’s super happy.
“So = can you explain research? what is it? is it a job? are you asked to do it? do kids make up their own topics? is it a competitive position? which majors have it? It sure is a buzz word here; but I don’t know what it all means. thanks.”
I think this is a great set of questions, and indeed a lot of people talk about it in the college admissions world! 
I would say that “research” for a high school student tends to be either volunteering or working (for pay) with a doctor or scientist or sometimes other people, and helping out with lower-level tasks in the laboratory. The way it’s different from an “intern” job (though the terms are sometimes used overlappingly) is that if you have a job doing “research,” your tasks will include laboratory things like washing glassware, practicing lab techniques, reading scientific/professional papers, attending group meetings, things like that.
At the college level, I believe that it starts the same way but students are given more responsibility and may even get the chance to be named on research papers (also true for the very rare HS student). Students are more likely to be paid at this level, and also more likely to do some decision-making instead of just following someone else’s protocol 100%.
In most cases, students have to seek out opportunities (are not asked to do it), but some professors see excellent students in their classes and might ask, “so-and-so, would you like to come and work in my lab?”.
I don’t think most students make up their own topics - even in graduate school, at least in STEM, professors are steering the big picture, though students will have varying degrees of autonomy within that.
Research positions are very competitive, and sometimes are connected to “who you know” as to which students get them. At some colleges, to their credit, there are formal programs where kids have a much better chance at getting a research position from the beginning.
Most STEM majors will have some kind of research going on, but whether or not they let younger students participate might vary quite a bit. And then sometimes you have something like the music department looking for a research intern to catalogue something and that is called research, also. I assume there’s also humanities research, but I don’t know about that.
HTH!
My kids have participated in a variety of UG research projects. My ds who is a chemE worked in a professor’s lab, assisted with research (paid), and traveled internationally with his prof to present the research. That was his only UG research, but he co-oped for 12 months. Our ds who is now in grad school for physics participated in multiple different projects–2 different ones on-campus (unpaid) and 2 different REUs (paid). He stayed with his 2nd on-campus project from sophomore to sr yr. By the time he graduated, he went from just meeting with his prof on the project to being part of her research team along with the post-doc and grad students.
In terms of competitive, my kids haven’t found on-campus positions competitive. They have approached depts and asked, met with professors and discussed, and then devoted themselves to hrs of research. They have definitely benefited from the experience. REUs, otoh, are extremely competitive ( there can be 100s of applicants for 10 or so slots.)
For chemE ds, I think his research helped develop his resume for getting his co-op job. For my physics ds, research was essential. Grad school admissions requires a strong research background.
My sophomore dd who is a foreign language major was just approved for funding for research (so paid) that she will be starting in the fall. She will be working on a research project focused on language development in cultures that are being oppressed and their language suppressed. SHe is super excited to be part of the project.
Re: IMO, research opportunities can take many forms in college. For example, as a senior we worked on a research project overseen by a PhD candidate where we studied the latency of a ground squirrel when exposed to various stimuli (e.g. the screech of a red tail hawk). We set-up the experiments, conducted the studies, recorded the results and wrote-up a research paper confirming and supporting our hypothesis.
I don’t remember this being competitive but you had to have a certain GPA to be accepted.
I think similar opportunities like this are available by most, if not all, colleges. Of course, some are more competitive than others.
@Cheeringsection My D20 told me the other day that she plans on coming home every weekend. My first thought was … does that mean I’ll see more of you than I do now? My second thought was … so I get to see more of you AND enjoy a clean room at least five days a week.
FYI my point above about certain fields not lending themselves to undergrad research was more related to my grad experience. In my lab in grad school there were no undergrads. There were no undergrads in any of the theory labs on our floor. (Not actual labs, just interconnected offices shared by grad students and post-docs)
I didn’t actually even understand any of the talks in the theory group until I had finished all my first year grad classes!
@tutumom2001 enjoy that while it lasts! I think once she gets involved on campus she will come home less and less.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Really useful info! Just for clarification-for the 10 slots per 100 applicants, do you mean within the university? I assume that you mean across universities.
My D’s roommate was ‘involved in research’ her freshman year. She was paid $10/hr to watch videos of mice playing with toys, and document various things. She could have kept the job sophomore year, but she opted to do something, anything, else.
Then there was the student we met on a college visit who was also ‘involved in research’, who wrote a program to graph the results from a study. Cool, but I wouldn’t call it research. The term ‘research’ seems to be used pretty fast and loose at most/all colleges.
@bigmacbeth I agree that that doesn’t sound like great UG research. (Neither does what @socaldad2002 described.). That is not the type of research my kids have done.
@Octagon REUs are university specific. Students apply to a specific REU opportunity. A single program may accept 10-12 students but have 100s of students apply bc students from U’s across the country are applying to the exact same program. There are lots of REUs out there. Students should apply to several, and if lucky, they will receive 1 offer.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek No, I wasn’t trying to suggest those were what I would consider ‘real’ research opportunities. I was just trying to point out what some universities will pass off as ‘research’ when people are visiting. You need to dig a little deeper. My D17 has been lucky with her UG research ops as well… She was 0/1 in REUs for this summer, however.
D17 was doing research about nanoparticles called hedgehogs since freshman year. She might not continue next semester if they don’t start paying her 
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for the info. I am also Mom to a “physics geek” who aims for a Ph.D. in physics!
@Octagon Since grad school in physics is a goal, UG research opportunities should be a top filter.
Have you ever looked at grad cafe? I would not encourage your student to look bc it can be quite overwhelming. But, in reading through those lists of acceptances and rejections, it becomes clear that a research background is vital (presentations, publications, REUs, etc are pretty standard fare). You can also see the trend that advanced coursework, GPA, and PGRE scores also make or break an application. Many people will state that schools are no longer weighing the PGRE heavily, but when you look through the posted results, that statement does not appear to be an honest one at this pt. Maybe 4 yrs from now it will be different, but kids with top PGRE scores do currently appear to have better grad school outcomes.
( https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=physics%2A&t=a&pp=250&o=d (If you hover on the little red diamonds, you can see the posters stats that some share.)
Regarding research: I am not in a position to know all the games that universities play and if kids are offered “research” in quotation marks that is laughable or fake. Probably true. However, I have been a researcher for a long time and lots and lots of my work was repetitious and very boring. There were periods of lots of dead time followed by crazy work. Also lots of projects were abandoned because they went nowhere.
ps. I did not work with animals but spending hours watching animals play does not sound very off of some of the stuff I did lol!
So washing beakers in a lab would count as “research”?