Question about finding research opportunities

Parents Forum
1

(This was originally posted in the Rice forum but someone suggested I might get better help here)

This might be a silly question, but when people say they do reasesrch, what exactly are they doing and how? My daughter is one of the very top engineering academy students at her school and number 1 in her class overall, will most likely be a National Merit Finalist (has the score with wiggle room and meets all the qualifications to move from NMSF to NMF) next year, partcpates in Technology Student Association and has qualified for Nationals every year but hasn’t placed there. She has not heard of any research opportunities nor does she know of any classmates doing any. She is an elite swimmer and the time commitment of her training, 9 practices a week averaging 2.5 hours each plus meets and travel meets, means she forfeits some opportunities like robotics team and summer programs at universities. So, I’m not sure how research fits in but first I need to understand what kids are doing, who they are doing it for/through, and how they got the opportunity.

Rice is far and away her number one choice. On our visit she had a realization that she had been so hyper focused on getting her swim times where they needed to be to get recruited that she hadn’t paid enough attention to the fact that students with high stats like hers were still rejected in large numbers! She worries her swimming commitment might keep her from the extras that make or break an application

2

My son was very similar including being an elite athlete. He contacted the local university and got in touch with the engineering department and offered to work for free. He gave references and they checked in with his guidance counselor. They had him mapping data collected by a drone over the summer. He learned and used some technical software and they did ultimately let him fly the drone. It was 8 weeks and gave him some real world experience. They worked around his practice schedule. He is now a first year aerospace engineer major doing drone research at Georgia Tech, it really helped that he had that experience.

3

Research means lots of different things (and sometimes people use the word when it’s a plain vanilla internship).

Some kids live near big universities and are able to find a faculty member who runs a big operation which can always use an extra pair of hands (particularly if your kid is computer literate- everyone needs an extra programmer on a big project). Some kids live near a big corporate park and can get a summer job doing statistical analysis (say for a clinical trial at a drug company) or other kinds of modeling. If you live near a teaching hospital there may be volunteer opportunities for “research” which will be a fancy name for helping out on a project- interning in the grant writing department? Intern in the finance department learning the nuances of outside funding and tracking spending, compliance, etc.

A VERY motivated kid (or well connected parent who is willing to helicopter a ton) can find a sponsor/mentor at any of these places for an actual idea that a kid has (a one stop diagnostic test for ALS or a cheaper way to screen for prostrate cancer). These opportunities usually come about if a HS is very well plugged in to the regional and national science competitions, with a savvy teacher who advises and can teach the kids appropriate research protocol.

But don’t fetishize “research”. An actual summer job scooping ice cream or folding sweaters at the Gap are fine. I think the point is just to show good time management skills.

If you don’t live near a place which employs a lot of scientists or PhD’s and your HS doesn’t have a faculty point person, it is tough to find “research”.

4

No comment on whether or not it should be pursued for the purposes of college admissions, but my ds who loves research (and has since middle school and is still that way going into grad school apps) participated in several research opportunities during high school. Some were through summer programs like SSP. Others were on a university campus where he DEed.

5

I would think it would be very difficult to do both research and be an elite competitor in a sport with year-round training. Kids try, but there really isn’t time to do everything. There will be plenty of kids at Rice and other places who didn’t do HS research.

My son did research in a lab at the UC campus near our home. But, he gave up competing in volleyball and participating in cross-country for that. (He wasn’t going to be a top competitor in either one, and was mainly doing sports for health and fun. He switched to bike riding from home->HS->research->home.)

DS obtained the research position by emailing a physics professor about a project he lectured about at our local astronomy club. He was able to be useful to the project largely because of his programming skills. He wrote code for data acquisition, data analysis, laser control, and image analysis. Because he was in a HS engineering program where he’d learned machining and other hands-on skills, he also did a fair bit on machining and wiring. He ended up with 2 group publications and worked with vacuum chambers, fairly big lasers, microcontrollers and the like. This was a professor who had worked with HS students successfully before.

He also did the SSP program that @Mom2aphysicsgeek’s son attended. Prior to that he’d spent one summer 40 hours/week in the lab mentioned above and one summer on a CS-based research project at the same UC through a program specifically for high schoolers.

Note that many students who do HS research have a setup so that they can write an individual research paper to be entered in one of the big-name science fair competitions. That wasn’t his aim. We don’t have a local or state ISEF qualifying option, and he enjoyed the collaborative aspects of being in a lab group more than I think he would have a more solitary project with a competition deadline.

6

My nephew didn’t have any high school research before attending Rice, but he wrote to a professor over the summer who had him doing research starting during freshman orientation! My recollection was that he did a computer summer camp one year, a school trip to Alaska one year and had some normal summer jobs. He was not an athlete.

Computer skills are definitely useful. My older son his a computer nerd and my husband is a professor at a med school. My husband hates mentoring high school students, but does get persuaded to take one in from time to time. My computer nerd son had opportunities fall into his lap all the time. He put together my husband’s website when he was in middle school. Later on someone asked if he could write a program that would analyze peptides - that got a big thank you in a paper and the program has been used by other researchers. We have a science research program at our school, but our kid had no interest in being part of it.

7

D did a neuroscience research project as part of an independent study (she got HS credit for it), with a mentor from a local college.HS had the IS/credit program in place, she had to find a college prof willing to mentor. She did the research mostly independently (on sleep disorders as I recall).

8

This is all great information! Thank you so much to all who took the time to share!

9

My D contacted a professor at a local university who was doing research in a field she found interesting. The professor let her join the lab where she has been able to help conduct research for the past three years. She is also a recruited athlete, so it has been very difficult to manage both. She goes once a week to the lab after school, and is a little late to practice on those days.

I don’t think the research experience gave her much of a boost with admissions, but it has been an invaluable experience in many ways.

Honestly, if your D’s swim times are fast enough, all she needs are good grades and test scores. If she wants to do the research, go for it, but if she’s doing it just to get an extra bump with admissions it’s probably not worth the added stress.

10

Well, MIT is showing an amazing net price for us, around 11k while schools like Case Western, Tufts, Colorado School of Mines, RPI, and especially Harvey Mudd (I think I’m remembering this list correctly, I really need to get spread sheet going) have net price showing $34-50k.

Swim isn’t going to help get her into MIT even though her times are pretty high up their roster simply because they don’t have any pull with admissions there. I don’t know if anyone is getting into MIT without research or national awards.

Rice is showing a net price around double MIT. That’s where she most wants to be if all works out with recruitment, admissions, and finances.

11

Your D does not need research or national awards to get into MIT. (My kid did not have those). He worked a fast food job the summer between junior and senior year, wrote a funny essay about getting grease out of a polyester uniform. (it’s harder than you think).

He loved math (still does, even though his professional path is very far from what he thought he’d be doing when he started at MIT) and he had many friends who did not have the national awards/research/gold medal type profile (and some who did). They all loved math-- but their other interests were crazy diverse. And interestingly- many of them worked in fast food during HS!

But if Rice is her first choice- start there. And can you afford the Rice price tag? And does she have a viable safety/financial safety???

12

“Swim isn’t going to help get her into MIT even though her times are pretty high up their roster simply because they don’t have any pull with admissions there.”

That’s not really true. MIT coaches can write letters of support for an applicant. If your daughter is as competitive a swimmer as you’ve indicated, then you should reach out to the MIT swim coach. There are rules about when the coach can meet your daughter, but (I believe) they are always allowed to do so if you visit the campus. (That’s what my son did. He is now an MIT athlete… Bring a resume - including academics, swim results - when you meet the coach.)

Recruited athletes at MIT must be competitive academically with the overall applicant pool - that’s true. But, if your daughter is indeed academically competitive (check the CDS), then swimming would be an attractive EC. Also, don’t overlook that women applicants are admitted at roughly twice the rate as men applicants at MIT, because of the desire for gender balance on campus.

Not trying to steer you away from Rice, etc. But it seems like MIT has offered you an attractive FA package, and I don’t think that you should cross it off the list simply because of a (mistaken, IMO) belief that the MIT admission committee doesn’t care at all about fielding competitive teams.

13

@whatisyourquest Oh wow! I have so many questions for you! The most important one being, is your son happy there? Has he found a good academic/athletic rhythm?

14

@BertieMom I sent you a PM because I don’t want to derail this thread. Good luck!

15

@whatisyourquest, I don’t think @BertieMom’s daughter has financial aid packages yet. I think she/he was talking about running NPC’s.

@BertieMom, my eldest son graduated from MIT. Yes, his financial aid package was quite generous, though at the time, the f. aid packages from Princeton, Caltech and Vanderbilt were all much better. However, he had a yearly Corporate NM Scholarship, so we ended up paying less than 10K total for 4 years.

My son was a math major (is currently a data scientist), and did “fall into” some physics research during high school, but I don’t think it was necessarily for his admissions. I would say the letter of recommendation from his research mentor/professor was the more valuable part of his application.

My son was homeschooled, so the schooling situations are different. However, I’ll still share that he had been a high performing baseball player (was co-MVP on his freshman baseball team, and the other MVP was drafted into the major leagues), but we/he made the decision that academics were more important than moving to the local high school in order to play baseball. He played IM flag football and softball at MIT. Though he could have walked on the baseball team, it would have been too time consuming for him since he wanted to do many other things.

He was invited to do research by a physics professor at the local state university because he had audited upper division physics courses and did really well.

I can tell you that as an independent college consultant, I work with plenty of students who don’t do research who still get into schools like Rice. Rice really likes to feel the love (demonstrated interest is important to them), so if that’s your D’s #1 choice, have her get connected-get on email lists, sign up for presentations, and interview/visit, for sure.

Colleges do like athletes. Maybe your D can be a D III recruited athlete at MIT or other schools that meet 100% demonstrated need. She should talk with her coach about this, for sure.