I was just reading this on Chronicle of Higher Ed…While I had a lot of thoughts, my main one was, “Those poor kids whose “research” was used as examples of how shoddy this program is.” I mean, I guess it’s on them because they put that out there for public consumption, but damn, that’s awkward.
The other thought I had was, when reading the shoddy research, that it actually looked like a potentially good learning experience. They went through the steps of research and preparing an article, including research methods and data evaluation and presentation (although it looks like no one told them about IRB…). And while the resulting publication is clearly not up to snuff and should not be published (and certainly can’t claim peer-review status), it’s not a bad extracurricular learning program of sorts. It’s not a bad thing to get a taste of what scholars do and be given a walk through of the process. It is of course not a great look to have the work “published” by a sketchy company making false claims about its validity.
And UPenn touts this utter BS “research” in their PR.
“Nearly one-third of the admitted students engaged in academic research during their time in high school, many earning national and international accolades for research that is already pushing the boundaries of academic discovery,” said E. Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions.” [UPenn]
- Do colleges see these “peer reviewed” articles as credible?
- Will this soon fall out of favor, as the service trip has done?
- Are the companies who offer these services unscrupulous? Or is it no different to paying for test prep or private advising or an EC?
- Your thoughts?
From the article:
Says one anonymous Ivy League AO, “There are very few actual prodigies. There are a lot of precocious kids who are working hard and doing advanced things. A sophomore in high school is not going to be doing high-level neuroscience. And yet, a very high number of kids are including this” in their applications.
(To avoid the inevitable comment about no scholarships at Princeton, I duly note it here.)
It does feel a little mean. But really… a paean to Chick-fil-A as research? If the kid has to have second thoughts about citing her “research” on her college apps, well, that could be a valuable learning experience. The public shaming aspect is unfortunate, though.
I agree that if this same end-product came out of something that was framed as a learning experience rather than as an “achievement,” it could be absolutely fine. That’s one of the big problems with college admissions - it pushes so many things in the direction of being about product when they really should just be about process.
As to the awkwardness… this reminded me of a research paper I found when doing some family research. A relative of mine, who attended a Seven Sisters college many years ago (and subsequently got her nursing degree from Yale, so she must have been a decent student) later donated her papers to the college… and thus a particular assignment ended up being featured in a research paper that was assessing the educational rigor at her school in that era. Granted, her writing was unsophisticated (it may well have been a first-year class), but it seemed rather unkind to name her and hold her up as an example of substandard academic work!
Not all research is BS research, though…We don’t know how Penn is separating the wheat from the chaff…
Yeah, and that one was also bothersome because the student didn’t even seem to care about the quality of her work, saying “It’s just important that there’s a link out there.”
So there’s that (big eye roll).
This is all unsurprising. I used to oversee a science fair at a wealthy private high school in which I required the students to design and execute their own research projects for peer review at a school event. Students with these sort of research experiences on their resumes couldn’t do it without significant teacher guidance and support. They were too accustomed to the hand-holding and their scientific reasoning wasn’t developed enough for application without a LOT of support. AOs are unlikely to be able to suss this out in the application process the way that a faculty member can.
This research does likely help some students in admissions and is compelling for some schools. UPenn wouldn’t mention it in their press release if it weren’t important to them.
AOs generally have no visibility to how the student got the research opportunity or if they paid for it. And for the record, these services can cost quite a bit more than $10k (the upper end stated in the article). No way these schools sort thru the wheat vs chaff in a 6-8 minute application read.
These students who do research are often (not always) those who have high levels of academic commitment and it’s great they have the option…especially those who don’t live near a uni, or those who live internationally.
Bottom line that many relatively affluent students have advantages in many aspects of education that have a meaningful impact in college admissions….better k-12 education, more exposure to ECs, more connections, etc etc etc.
The fallout from this scandal is swift and it’s real:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/business/chick-fil-a-first-location-closing/index.html
Ok yes, that was a joke. However I was less than thrilled with the part of the ProPublica article when the prep school girl touts the “family friendliness” of ChickFilA’s unkind policies toward people they don’t like.
Yes, I noted the “traditional beliefs” she touted (although their LGBTQ+ stance is obviously not specifically mentioned)…
Some complain about standardized tests favoring the rich and privileged. Wonder what they think of this kind of activities, which can be easily gamed if one has the means.
Research on STEM subjects is hard. There is very little an undergraduate can do, let alone a high school sophomore/junior. Unless you count performing an experiment carefully designed by the faculty or graduate students — ok, go turn on the equipment, wait for N seconds, write down the measurements of X and Y, repeat the experiment with different A and B, plot the data, and say something about what you see — as the high schooler’s contributions.
I’m all for high schoolers gaining research experience. There are certainly examples of a brilliant observation, an unconventional tweak, etc. by a high schooler that led to interesting, publishable results. But those are extremely rare, and certainly can’t be 1/3 of the admitted class as touted by UPenn. The rest are the results of gaming the admission process.
Yes, very true. And, of course UPenn is explicitly encouraging this gaming of the process (and they’re not the only ones, of course) as a means to toot their own horn about the vast “accomplishments” of their entering class.
I don’t think it’s “gaming” if the kid is interested in the research, but I do agree that the advancements made by high schoolers doing research are extremely rare…but there’s still value in doing research including learning the scientific method, following protocols closely, being around accomplished people in an area the student is interested in, etc.
I agree. Especially that there’s value as @Mwfan1921 said:
But I doubt more than a handful are conducting, as Penn claims, “research that is already pushing the boundaries of academic discovery”. Paint me skeptical.
It depends on who is leading the research, imo. I say this as the parent of a high schooler who has published research (which she is actually helping present next week at a national conference). My daughter is not a wunderkind nor do we have wealth or connections. She made a connection with a professor at a T5 university near us (through one of her ECs in a related area). That professor has taken on a mentor role for her. He is the lead researcher and lead author, but he involved her in sifting through data, analyzing the data, writing up the results, making revisions based on peer review feedback, etc. No, she did nothing groundbreaking nor did she contribute any game-changing original ideas. But she did real work - the non-glamorous kind that is the foundation of a lot of research. And she got her name on the publication. And she got invited to help present it at a conference. Was she a key figure? Of course not. But she got an excellent experience and she made a legitimate contribution. It really was based on her faculty mentor who has just been amazing and has completely taken her under his wing for this.
No doubt about the value of exposing a high schooler to the research process, if it happens organically — e.g., if a high school/college offers a competitive application process that connects high schoolers with faculty members, and the results obtained are legitimate with non-trivial contributions from said students. But getting to brag about having published a paper of unknown quality with unknown individual contributions on a college application because the student’s parents can afford those services, is a sham.
That’s not what companies like Lumiere, et al are offering. These are real research opportunities with real profs with interesting research opportunities (and let’s face it, it’s difficult for kids to get spots doing research at the local college without connections). I don’t see this as any different from kids who benefit from playing sports that cost $20K+ per year, or having 1:1 test prep at $10K, or setting up non-profits where said focus already has a bajillion non-profits, etc.
Well, this is exactly it, in my opinion. For the vast majority, the way to learn is to start out as a contributor. If that contribution can be recognized in the form of having one’s name on a publication or whatever, great. But the push for students to portray themselves at a level above contributor leads to a whole lot of nonsense. It’s the same issue as students starting their own nonprofits because this somehow looks better than finding an existing organization that’s already doing that kind of work, and becoming a meaningful contributor. It wastes so much effort, just in the name of owning the whole enterprise rather than simply doing the work, at an appropriate level. Why do we want to teach kids that if you’re not at the top of the pyramid, it doesn’t count?