<p>This may sound like a stupid question, but how are high schoolers researching in the areas they have interest in?
I am a sophomore and I am 15 years old, turning 16 in August.
I live right near Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth Medical Center as well. I also live near other hospitals but none nearly as large as Dartmouth Medical.
How should I communicate with these places to try to get research done?
And how do kids know what they want to research?
It just seems as if nobody gets into the colleges I am looking at (JHU, Stanford, MIT) without having done research previous to college...</p>
<p>Well, the way I got into research was simply emailing professors who were doing work I was interested in. It did take a while before anyone was willing to take me on, so it might help to have a resume. It couldn’t hurt to have a basic outline of what you want to do, either. I went in with nothing and basically said “teach me something!!”, which resulted in grunt work in many different areas.</p>
<p>Where did you find these professors and their contact information?
Also, thank you so much for the response!</p>
<p>You have to do research and look them up. Everything is not always given to you.</p>
<p>Also, DON’T send the same email to all the professors. Your chances of getting a reply will substantially increase if you mention the professor’s work, what your experiences are in that field, and how you can contribute to his/her study.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s the hard way to land a research opportunity. You can also apply to special camps (RSI, Simons, Clark Scholars, Garcia, SIMR, SSTP, HSHSP, etc) - the most productive work is usually done in those camps because you’re more likely to receive an “individualized project” than simply collaborating with a postdoc.</p>
<p>RSI! RSI! and email, email, email. and don’t only do research to get into college. It’s way too time-consuming and patience-sapping to do for such a mundane reason. Find a topic you genuinely want to know more about, and start looking into it. If you really don’t want to do research, spend the time doing something you like better. Life is too short not to be happy.</p>
<p>I just looked at the university websites. As previously mentioned, pick something you’re interested in!! It can be hell if you don’t really care about what you’re working on since you will spend a huge amount of time on it.</p>