<p>I have a few questions about research in science (specifically biology, if it helps):</p>
<li>I realize you have to contact your “mentor” first, but how can you go about doing this?</li>
<li>Would you normally start your own project or join an existing one, such as one created by the mentor? If the latter is true, is it possible you will just be the test tube washer or something like that?</li>
<li>If you do normally start your own, how specific does the idea have to be?</li>
<li>Because research involves discovering new things, do you have to have an extremely high level of knowledge in the subject before starting (say, what one with an advanced degree, or maybe a grad student in the field might know)? How high?</li>
</ol>
<p>1) Email a professor, who will probably assign you to a grad student.
2) Join an existing one. It's really hard to start your own (important) project unless you know a lot about the subject. You may or may not be the test tube washer, depending on whether you can do anything else that's useful. Try to take as much responsibility for the project as possible, because if you do so you might get authorship in a journal paper, and that's a huge resume boost.
4) Depends on the project. Your grad student might give you a few unintelligible papers to read. Or just make you wash test tubes. Usually whoever's mentoring you will understand you're a high school student and treat you accordingly.</p>
<p>Yes. I'm fizix, version 2.0, new and improved.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, it also helps if you have something to offer the lab rather than just being a high school student in need of training. Like when I did research I worked as a computer programmer for an experimental fruit fly lab. So I was considered important, because none of the other people in the lab could do simulations.</p>
<p>Basically it's good to do something that you are the best in the lab at. It helps with authorship negotiations etc. and usually makes your work more fun since you're not taking orders from some grad student.</p>
<p>in my experience, the more prestigious a college, the less likely professors are to allow you to work with them...lol sucks because i live 4 miles away from the college ranked #1</p>
<p>Well, I don't think the U of M professors will be too hesitant...but then again, they most likely have huge classes to teach. U of M is somewhat prestigious, too.</p>
<p>Ok. If Im getting this right, as a high school student, I can e-mail professors from local universities and ask them if I can help with a research? And then, if they say yes, I do it???</p>
<p>You can also try asking people at your school who have done research about where they worked. If they can refer you to a professor, it will be much easier to get involved with the research.</p>
<p>I personally lucked out because both my teacher and my classmate recommended me to the professor with which my classmate did research last summer. So now I am beginning research at Columbia.</p>
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in my experience, the more prestigious a college, the less likely professors are to allow you to work with them...lol sucks because i live 4 miles away from the college ranked #1
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</p>
<p>The professors at Caltech have been pretty nice to me so far, and I know at least two other people who have worked for professors there in high school...maybe it's just Harvard that has all the silent profs :cool:</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that if you email lots of professors, and especially if you send them form letters and don't express true interest in their specific topic, you'll probably be less likely to get a response. Professors talk. The way to get a response is to go to one of their talks or otherwise read up on their research so you can get an idea of what they're doing, then talk with them about their research problem over email. Like "I don't know how I'd solve the problem, but maybe I could use conditional probability to do such-and-such..." Act very enthusiastically.</p>
<p>And definitely try to work at the most prestigious college possible, because the quality of your advisor/topic will determine in large part where you publish. If you have a good advisor (/research topic) you might end up publishing in Nature or Science (in which case you'll be able to go to any college you damn well please), but if your topic sucks you probably won't get any papers out of it at all.</p>
<p>^ yea that's true, I sent out many impersonal emails and didn't get responses. When I finally called a professor or two, I got a chance to do research </p>
<p>are you hoping to do research this summer? if you are, it may be kind of hard for you to find a spot because many professors (at least at the university i research at) already have a interns and researchers etc. in their labs already.</p>
<p>I emailed professors, but none of them replied. One professor made me very angry, because he was researching the topic that I did my science fair paper on. Obviously, a high school student's research wouldn't be as accurate or important as that of an actual research team... but I wrote a very long paper on the subject, analyzed data, came to my own conclusions, and even created several theoretical chemical equations that would explain the phenomenon that the professor was researching. Of course I realize that I'm just a high school student... but I still put in an immense amount of work, completely understood the subject, and was extremely polite in my email.</p>
<p>I also asked my Chem teacher about research opportunities... but there weren't any opening around where I live. The best she could come up with was working as a fact-checker at an online medical journal (which I ultimately couldn't do, anyway)... it was disappointing =(</p>
<p>just a note - don't pick a specialty and decide that's the only thing you want to do. I wanted to do computer science research, and im writing this post during a break from my geology internship (which is great, and i love it. and i got it by asking someone at a university open house.) </p>
<p>also, if your school has an alumni contact person, ask them if any of the alums from your HS are scientists/professors/doctors in the are. they will generally be much more receptive if you are attending their alma mater. and even if they can't give you a research position, they probably know someone who can.</p>
<p>Ugh. I've not had much luck with contacting professors w/ research opportunities either. The universities around my area [that would be feasibile to travel to] are not very good and most do not want to work with high school students. Most of the people at my hs would not even dream of using their summer to research obscure science topics [gasp]. Anyway, good luck to anyone trying to get a position.</p>
<p>i hate princeton...it's so hard to get people to respond to your emails and no one ever picks up the phone in the lab i want to work in this summer!!!</p>
<p>I'm not trying to find a professor this summer, but hopefully next summer I will. I thinking mostly of evolutionary biology, and I have a list compiled of professors whose research sounds interesting and the research they have done and are doing. I'm also brushing up my knowledge on the subject.</p>