Have you attended or had a kid at Penn? Not all of those students are able to keep up. There were many kids in C19’s class who were superstars at their high schools yet failed classes, couldn’t graduate on time because they didn’t timely meet the major requirements, and, in some circumstances, transferred out.
Ready-made to exploit or contribute, depending upon background. The true superstars with proven research chops get the better positions, funding, names on publications. Everyone else gets to wash test tubes or other menial work.
The travesty is encouraging plagiarism and fake research, and not doing anything about it once exposed.
For all the supposed groundbreaking research published by their acceptances, why do those students somehow not continue that once enrolled? Where are the mountains of published groundbreaking research from their undergrads that would surely be happening if UPenn’s claims about their acceptances were true?
UPenn publishes a College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal. There were six papers that made the cut in 2023. None of these papers were published elsewhere.
So if a student gets to Penn without having published in high school, Penn essentially freezes them out of any real research opportunities as an undergrad? Yikes! Can anyone else confirm whether this is true about Penn?
Not to sound harsh/uncaring, but isn’t this what basically happens at every school? A hierarchy develops with who gets opportunities and at what level?
I don’t think that’s what mountainsoul was really saying. But I do think the Matthew Principle often kicks in in such cases: having previous research experience tends to make you more likely to be offered more research opportunities.
As a research prof, I would never even think to ask an undergrad if they had HS research experience prior to joining the lab. We don’t ask a CV for someone at that age, since few have one yet. If they volunteered the information that they had a publication, I would be very surprised and would want to see it out of pure curiosity. That is so far out of the norm.
I do think I’d be able to parse pretty easily whether or not the HS experience/publications were legit or shenanigans. I suppose some other profs might take it at face value and it wouldn’t raise their eyebrows. I haven’t studied/worked at elite institutions, so perhaps they do things differently there. But it would be remarkable everywhere I’ve ever been.
During some parts of my career, I’ve had way more undergrads asking to do research with me than we have spots in the lab. I select student researchers based on a number of criteria. I don’t care much about their grades. The best students generally do okay in their core science classes, but their research performance isn’t robustly correlated with GPA. I mostly pick the students that I think will allow the most mutually beneficial relationship, and I particularly like choosing students that really need a leg up to achieve their goals.
The nature of the work I’d assign them in the lab (“washing glassware” or data analysis or running experiments) would not have anything to do with their HS research experience or lack thereof. Like all undergrads, they’d start with small (and some menial) tasks and would be given more responsibility according to the student’s strengths/goals and the goals of the lab.
Yes, but some do more than others. Time in my lab may be an insignificant blip on the radar for some students, who will be successful in achieving their goals regardless of anything I do. For others, it can mean the difference between them succeeding or not. When opportunities are limited, I prefer to give them to the person for whom my involvement will make the most difference. This isn’t true all the time, but if I have 5 students apply for 1 spot, I consider this sort of stuff more. My spouse is the same with how they choose students as well. We both also refuse to take students for volunteer positions, as we think that it’s exploitative to let them work without pay. Not everyone does things this way, but this is how we’ve chosen to run our research groups.
If there really are a lot of high school kids who are capable of expanding scientific knowledge to the extent that they are internationally recognized for their research, why are we sending them to 16 more years of training (four years undergrad, six years Phd, and six years post-doc)?
If they already know what research questions to ask, and how to design experiments to get significant and important results on the first try, they are ahead of most PIs. We should just set them up in a lab and fund them, now.
I don’t mean to single out @mountainsoul . It sounds like this student designed their own experiments, carried them out independently (not sure where funding or lab space came from), attracted mentors, and achieved results that advanced science in their field, leading to global recognition. I do think that is incredibly rare.
This whole thread is very interesting, yet troubling at the same time. While I am sure there are a few phenoms out there with the ability to synthesize information, come up with a hypothesis, design and conduct the experiments/research as necessary, analyze the data, and secure funding I cannot imagine this scenario for most of the 16-18 year olds. I did research after graduating from college, one of my first projects that I “designed” happened after several years. Part of the time was securing funding, and a PI who would consider expending resources. The fact that major Universities are basically pushing for high schoolers to have this kind of experience really appears counterproductive. It seems like everything now is manufactured just to tell the “right” story.
It would be interesting to know of the incoming freshman with published research how many continue to publish and do research once at Penn.
I don’t doubt @mountainsoul’s child’s accomplishments. Laser-focused high schoolers completely obsessed with one narrow scientific pursuit, who received help to connect with college professors and ended up publishing an award-winning paper with several other co-authors, do exist. But you can’t build a class of 800 (!) such kids (1/3 of UPenn’s 2022 freshman class). It’s hard to believe there are 800 of them in the country in any given year, and even if there are, why would they all shun MIT/Harvard/Stanford and decide to matriculate at UPenn.
Penn said 1/3 of admitted students ‘engaged’ in research, they didn’t say 1/3 were published. And many of those 1/3 who were admitted may have not chosen to attend Penn.
“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.”
Not picking on mountainsoul as I don’t know them or their child. But this whole thread is full of parents saying their child did real research while all those other kids’ cases are troubling. This is a common phenomenon and is to be expected.
Isn’t this a predictable symptom of the ailing system of elite college admissions? AOs can’t tell the fake research from the real ones in 10 hours, let alone in 10 minutes. Professors in the research area could easily tell the difference, but they aren’t generally involved in admissions in the US (except in only one college that I know of) because of the sheer volume of applications. With no effective limit on the number of applications and hurdles so low that most applicants are deemed “qualified”, we’re going to have to deal with this problem, and other similar problems not yet widely noticed.
What do you mean ‘deal with the problem’? I do obviously see a problem with students who have lied on their app, like the Penn student linked above… and if caught, they should be kicked out of school.
It is true that most students who go to college, can complete college…but isn’t that what we want? And also to get more capable students to consider college?
Of course there are more difficult majors and more difficult schools (like MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd…specifically not including the Ivies), but the self selection and/or weeding out processes generally work.