<p>How do some high schoolers get to do research? I've been looking for a few years now and I still don't understand. I'm really interested in physics and I'd like to go to a good college for it, but it's hard to be competitive if I'm lacking science extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Most people do it through contacts and some get there through sheer tenacity. </p>
<p>You contact anyone and everyone who is local and doing some research to see if they let you spend time in their lab.</p>
<p>There are also well known competitive programs you can apply to but most have deadlines around December January time frame for next summer.</p>
<p>^can you give an example of one of the competitive programs?</p>
<p>You can review the list in summer programs that look good on your resume.</p>
<p>[Summer</a> Programs | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/summer]Summer”>Summer programs | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>I know my lab has a summer program for high school students to do research. They train them on basic lab techniques and different labs volunteer to set up a project for them to do over the summer. If there are any research labs near you, you might want to consider seeing if they have similar programs.</p>
<p>I know my PI would sometimes send around emails of students who contacted him to do research in the lab (usually over the summer). Emailing labs near you might be another way to go. My experience is in biology, though, and I don’t know if it’s different in physics.</p>
<p>There are also other ways to have science extracurriculars without doing research (I never did research when I was a high school student nor did I have any “science” extracurriculars and still went to a good school for biology). Are their science clubs at your school or science competition groups? I don’t know what grade you are in, but there are summer science programs that you could try to do, as well.</p>
<p>Physics is harder than Bio IMO since it requires more background knowledge. Try readin up on Summer Science Program (Astrophysics) - they are very good. There was a local program where I used to live that allowed students to work in a laser lab for 8 weeks but you probably don’t live in that area…</p>
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<p>I doubt background knowledge will be much of a factor for high school students. Labs, in my experience at least, expect pretty much nothing out of high school students. They generally just do as their told, but the safety protocols might be different in a physics lab, depending on what they are doing.</p>
<p>There are also residential summer programs you could look into, if you do not live near any research labs/institutes.</p>
<p>Honestly, (sorry bio people) physics research requires more STEM skills like Computer science and mathematics. </p>
<p>I asked many local professors for a particle physics research volunteer internship, but they turned me down because I lacked computer science skills. Physics labs aren’t really dangerous (no balls or ramps or anything), they are just computer labs that run simulations. </p>
<p>Bio internships are much easier to come by. Sorry if I am oversimplifying it, but bio internships just involve monitoring a plant’s growth and response to different things. Much less background required. </p>
<p>I was lucky enough to get a volunteer internship with some astronomy professor. He was nice, because his lab is just a bunch of students working at computers analyzing data from a recent NASA flight. I have to learn IDL (similar to Matlab) before I actually do anything.</p>
<p>Research experience is really difficult to get for high school students unfortunately. My school and most of my state does a research internship search for 11th graders. Students in my area are very fortunate to have a army base in the county I live with a cancer and infectious disease sectors. I applied for these internships and they are very competitive, and unfortunately I didn’t get in. When I was looking around for research internships, many asked if I was accepted in the school-government internship program because that’s our main research spot for students.</p>
<p>Also (from what I’ve been through), the researchers don’t expect students to know so much of the research material. When I applied to a mouse genetic research lab and the molecular crystallography laboratories, during the interviews, most of the stuff they told me flew over my head. They teach you basic laboratory skills and safety and assign you a supervised research project. They won’t give you anything you can’t handle or won’t be able to execute. I never heard of research labs reject students because they didn’t know how to work a certain program or computer applications, especially for high school students. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with knowing the basics to the research that being conducted, but, on my interview they were talking about myeloid-derived suppressor cells and stuff and I had no clue lol.</p>
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<p>It depends on the lab. Physics research may be more computational than some bio labs, which is fair enough–I’m not in the field to say otherwise–but there are computational biology labs as well, which wouldn’t be a good fit for a high school student without that sort of background. I didn’t mean that there were safety protocols because of balls or ramps. I meant that they might work in clean rooms or the like. Though I have very limited knowledge of what physics research entails so that might be completely wrong =D I know my friend did a internship at NASA when he was in high school–but he wanted to go into engineering, so perhaps it was different?</p>
<p>There are many, many projects that I wouldn’t give to a high school student because they don’t have the technical knowledge (aren’t familiar with the instrumentation, the techniques, etc) to do it. Taking on a high school student is generally hard for a lab because you have to come up with something manageable that they can do with their limited experience, and the possibilities of that (or the inclination) is different depending on the lab or the person, which is why you just need to ask around. High school students generally aren’t expected to really analyze their data (in the sense of interpreting its meaning and what next steps to take) or plan their own experiments, which is much of what research (at least the bio research I’ve done) entails. But if much of physics work is analyzing data, it might be harder to have a high school student do that.</p>
<p>It may be the case that most bio labs could come up with something that a high school student could do, and it’s harder for most physics institutions to do the same. But there are the similar restraints in many biology fields that there are in physics, especially if you are doing computational work, working with animals, etc. This could be why bio internships are easier to come by–there are more labs that are able to take on students than in a computational physics environment because they can give them basic training on site, perhaps without really expecting them to understand everything that they are doing. But I would never have a high school student solve a crystal structure, analyze NMR data, or do work in Matlab because it would be too difficult to train them in it or they don’t have the biochemistry background to understand it.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize that most physics work is computational, though that does make sense. I can see how that would make it more difficult to find work in a physics institution as a high school student, but the same restraints do exist in bio labs. It might just be easier to work around them.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply guys. (:
I’m a rising senior, so I feel like it’s a little late for me to do anything.</p>
<p>Scrape a list of professors’ emails.</p>
<p>BCC.</p>
<p>Well it all really depends on location and whether or not you live in an area where research is common. My suggestion is to read reviews of the literature related to whatever interests you. I am currently doing an internship (in a lab working on Alzheimer’s), and that’s all I was told to do for the entire first week. Reading scientific articles can be daunting if you’re not used to it. My suggestion would be to read reviews from ~10 years ago and work to the present. As you’re reading look up every single thing that you don’t understand/are unfamiliar with. </p>
<p>Once you are familiar with the current research in your field (or as familiar as you can be), find a local lab where you might want to do research. Find published articles by the principal investigator of that lab and read them thoroughly. Think of what you want to help with/independently research. Then contact the principal investigator and make it clear that you are familiar with his or her work and are interested in working with him or her. Do whatever you can to shred any preconceived notions of high school students that the researcher might possess. </p>
<p>It may also be worthwhile to read up on standard lab techniques that might seem tedious to post-docs and lead researchers. </p>
<p>Hope this helped</p>
<p>& it’s not too late if you plan on going to grad school. It may be too late to help with undergrad admissions, but doing research between now and the end of senior year will open up many more research opportunities while in college, which are essential to grad school admissions.</p>
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<p>It’s likely too late to do a summer program, but if there are places nearby and you’d really like to get some research experience, it never hurts to ask if you can volunteer with them during the rest of the summer or perhaps after school during the year.</p>
<p>That being said I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Very few students do research in high school, and I doubt many colleges expect it of their applicants. You can still get into a college with a good physics program without it.</p>
<p>I contact Profs then, after being called for an interview do the literature review. Unless you plan on doing a very specific project (and IMO you’ll still end up with a huge idea if you do this), it’s best to see the lab’s interests and then go forward. </p>
<p>I don’t know about background knowledge in physics - but I feel like for everything, you do have to do literature review for the stuff to really be interesting on a deeper level. Techniques are variable - it depends on what kind of student you are and the PI/mentors you get. If you have a lot of experience, you can do quite advanced stuff by yourself (I know many high schoolers who do this). On the other hand, if you’re brand new, you’ll probably be redirected to something smaller. It’s really relative. </p>
<p>For physics, my friends had to know calculus (something most highschool students don’t know until grade 11/12) and some programming. I think theory was also useful but I am not an expert here.</p>
<p>I would not do the BCC thing. Make a nice form letter and a resume, find 20 Prof’s emails. Copy paste the form letter (obviously changing the name) and send it individually, along with the resume to each Prof.</p>
<p>In the form letter, sum up nicely your reasons for wanting to do research, your qualifications and what you find interesting about the prof’s research. A general summary (1 sentence, i.e. I find your research on ____ very interesting) is good enough - honestly, they don’t expect very much from undergrads, let alone HS students. Wait for responses.</p>
<p>July is late, but you never know.</p>