After doing research over the summer and spending more time in it during the school year, my mentor has discussed with me about plans of publication. I spent a ridiculous amount of time on my paper, reading 30+ papers, skyping with multiple professors, extensive programming and data mining, and of course actually writing it. I think I spent about 500 hours on this project. At the end of it all, my mentor plans to give me first author.
So I was wondering, how much weight does being published add to college admissions?
Wow! First of all, congratulations, that is a huge accomplishment. Second, since you were really passionate about it I would think a lot. I think it could take you from top 30 school down to a top 20 school maybe top 10 (of course you need to take into account academic factors, essays, etc.). Your next step would be to submit it into competitions. If you do all of that then you should be pretty good on extracurriculars. Are you a senior at the moment?
In my experience (I’ve published a lot in engineering journals), it can take up to two years for a paper to appear in print. Factors include: how long it takes peer reviewers to respond, how long it takes for you to address the reviewers’ criticisms, how long it takes the associate editor to respond, the length of the accepted paper queue, etc. So, unless you are a HS sophomore, it’s doubtful that your paper can be officially published in a journal prior to your submission of college applications.
A faster approach would be to submit your paper for presentation at a conference, which however carries less weight because the conference paper approval process is generally not as rigorous as that for journals.
BTW, you should be very grateful that your mentor is allowing you to be the first author. In my experience, the research head is most often the first author, even if other members of the research team do the vast majority of the work. That’s just the way it is, in engineering academia at least.
@Eva12344 Thank you. I’m a current junior. I submitted my research into the Siemens Science Fair where I was a semi-finalist but I did not progress to regional finals. But since my submission, I’ve done additional research and discovered potential for a bigger impact.
@whatisyourquest Well I guess I have one year for it to be published. I’ve submitted my paper already to national conference and was accepted there.
Thank you for you guys’ advice. It means a lot to me.