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<p>I hope you'll agree with me that by "toy" research problems you do not just mean those given you by a researcher or those found while doing research work in a lab.
I think the important notion is to be curious with those fiendish studies and to tackle questions that are difficult but you find imperative to answer.</p>
<p>I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but my only problem with high schoolers doing research is when they only do it for the rewards -- when winning competitions and getting into very selective colleges is more important than learning new things or figuring out whether a research career is something that interests them.</p>
<p>There's a thread on the grad school board right now in which a few undergraduates are basically claiming that spending a certain number of hours in the lab should entitle them to authorship on a paper, which pushes the same buttons in me. At some point, somebody is going to stop rewarding your mere time investment and only begin rewarding your quality of output. Might as well get used to it in high school.</p>
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I think creativity is best developed in classes for most people. I guess it depends on the field, but I know in chem you need a large base of knowledge before real creativity helps you in the lab...
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<p>I don't think most classes develop creativity - some MIT classes are a bit better about it because you do design (experimental or engineering), but there are plenty more where you're just learning information and applying it to problems. Learning foundational material is important, and creativity won't do you much good without it, but it complements creativity, it doesn't replace it.</p>
<p>It does vary by field. In a well-developed, mature field, as with many branches of theoretical math, you have to learn a lot of foundational material before you could come up with anything original, because people have been doing research in these fields for a long time. In a new and immature field, you don't need nearly as much. One of my senior-year MIT classes was on fMRI of high-level vision. Functional neuroimaging, as a field, has been around maybe 15 years, as opposed to centuries. The class required no previous background in the subject (the prerequisites were one upper-level cog sci/cog neuro class and probability/statistics), and the final project was to write a proposal for original research in the field, with an explanation of our experimental design and methodology for data analysis. We could do this because we had gone through the major literature in one term.</p>
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There's a thread on the grad school board right now in which a few undergraduates are basically claiming that spending a certain number of hours in the lab should entitle them to authorship on a paper...
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<p>Yeah, don't I wish. ;)</p>
<p>"I don't think most classes develop creativity - some MIT classes are a bit better about it because you do design (experimental or engineering), but there are plenty more where you're just learning information and applying it to problems. Learning foundational material is important, and creativity won't do you much good without it, but it complements creativity, it doesn't replace it."</p>
<p>Well, you've got to try to think about the material as you're incorporating it and relate it to everything you've seen before. Especially at MIT and Caltech, the workload the first two years can be overwhelming and taking on extra stuff like research can be counterproductive. Doing that stuff in IAP or summers is a different story.</p>
<p>in response to my quote:</p>
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A habit of commitment to helping others takes years to nurture, and one needs time to develop certain skills that are critical in being a useful volunteer.
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<p>collegealum314 wrote:</p>
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Yes, I know people who have basically devoted their life to service and they started early. Probably the volunteer experiences they had in high school were invaluable..But since this is MIT's board, I assume people are planning on having a technical or professional career.
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<p>I think I didn't make myself clear. I was talking about those people for whom community service doesn't become a career. Learning to integrate service into a busy life focused primarily on something else is the difficult skill I meant which takes years to develop and to find the right balance in. To learn to do that, one has to start early, if service is really to become a fundamental aspect of one's life -- which many people would say it should if you are to be a good person.</p>
<p>You can see the thread here. I'm very skeptical of "put it off" arguments, which you seem to be somewhat fond of. I think with many things, putting it off basically cuts off your options later. Not in a superficial way -- certainly community service doesn't become infeasible. You just grow up, like I have, to be the kind of person who doesn't feel much affinity for that kind of work, and that makes you poorer. </p>
<p>As for research developing creativity, of course it has to be the right kind of research. Test tube washing or the mental equivalent won't count. But once again, "put it off" just won't work here. One has to do the functional equivalent of solving research problems early on. Maybe in some cases classes provide the right conduit for that, but there it's just too easy to look up the answer, so they don't really give you the experience of struggling with a problem to the finish.</p>
<p>^^did you do research during the academic year in your first 2 years?</p>
<p>Kind of. Not very much. But I did do what I view as educational (i.e. useful) research in high school, and I think if I hadn't started then, I would be a very much weaker grad student now.</p>
<p>So, basically, you've got to take innitative. Do research, whearever, and follow your interests. So to do research one must be interested, develop curiosity, etc. But what about knowledge? Don't some research places need more knowledge on certain fields? For instance: Some one here mentioned about robotics and muscles. That is an interesting research, but high schools don't generally teach their students much about robotics, nor do they go in depth with muscles. Well, it is so in my son's school.
Anyway, selfstudy is an option, but it could be hard to self-study when the student is taking 5 AP courses. </p>
<p>and, molliebatmit (Can I call you Mollie???) writes
"I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but my only problem with high schoolers doing research is when they only do it for the rewards -- when winning competitions and getting into very selective colleges is more important than learning new things or figuring out whether a research career is something that interests them. "</p>
<p>Yes, I totally agree with you. But how would MIT distinguish between a motivated students and non-motivated students? Don't tell me recomendations. Teachers can be fooled easily, I have seen it happening in son's school.
Students generally think using research to gain awards increases their chances to get into MIT. But, there are students out there who don't like competitions, but are unusually brilliant and do research. Are these "non-competiting" students disadvantaged?
There are also students, who are motivated and very bright, but also desire awards. There are also people who are bright, but un-motivated, also desiring awards.</p>
<p>Are these students disadvantaged?</p>
<p>There are also bright students, who have passion to do research and gain awards. There are bright people who have no passion to do reseearch, but expects awards.
There are many types of people.
How will MIT know who is who?
Some researches are easy and some aren't. Some seem to be important, yet it's not. My son attended a GIS/GPS Analysis research for 4 days on Ulistac NAtional Area (UNA) at The Norcal Student Environment Network Conference.
All the names I used could be flashy, but he ended up hating it. I aksed him why, and he tells me its way too easy. No challenge at all. He went to SUMaC last year, and he loved it. It's not research though. </p>
<p>Anyway, my son could mention the Norcal research on the app, and with all the flashy words, he could make it sound important. Would MIT look at the flashy name and assume it's something big?
I think thats how students look at research. If the research sounds flashy and important, they think it would be helpful and a huge plus point as opposed to, lets say, Environment Research.</p>
<p>There are really only a couple of flashy names, and those are the Siemens/Intel Competition (or whatever they are calling it these days) and RSI. </p>
<p>Research recommendations are typically written by professors (the people running the research group,) so I would expect them not to be as easily fooled. Besides having RSI or Siemens on your resume', the only way a student would stand out is it the prof wrote about concrete examples of what the kid did or wrote something like, "this guy is as at the level of my grad students." There could be some exaggerration in some recommendations, but there is nothing to avoid it.</p>
<p>All in all, I don't think research is really that big of a deal to admissions officers unless you are pretty unusual. The kid that signs up for research and gets a good rec may get a little boost in admissions, but I would expect the reaction from an Adcomm would be, "OK, this kid is very orientated toward science." It's not a make-or-break thing. </p>
<p>So don't worry about it.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, Siemens-Westinghouse and Intel Science Talent Search are two separate science competitions and both are quite presigious.</p>
<p>I don't think MIT has any infallible yardstick to tell who's really motivated and who isn't, but I think they can gauge motivation the same way we can on CC. I think it's reasonably easy to tell when someone is really excited about their research when they talk about it here, and reasonably easy to tell when it's just another item they think MIT wants to see. It's harder to tell about people in the middle.</p>
<p>(And yes, please call me Mollie! :))</p>
<p>Mollie says:
"I don't think MIT has any infallible yardstick to tell who's really motivated and who isn't, but I think they can gauge motivation the same way we can on CC. I think it's reasonably easy to tell when someone is really excited about their research when they talk about it here, and reasonably easy to tell when it's just another item they think MIT wants to see. It's harder to tell about people in the middle."</p>
<p>So, those applicants who are actually interested in research CAN get rejected in favor of those in the MIDDLE. So, basically it's the way you present it on the application. If moderately interested applicant presents his research experience nicely, then he has a boost compared to that of a truelly research motivated applicant not explaining his research efficiently. </p>
<p>Wow...evaluating an applicant is hard work . . .</p>
<p>Worriemom,
In my experience, kids who live and breathe research don't worry about things like five AP exams getting in their way. (My son's class notebooks are littered with proofs, theories and programs he dreams up during class. It's his version of doodling. :)) Then he comes home and spends many waking hours reading the literature in his field, playing with it in his head, and making it his own. So, while his project didn't take many "hours" -- he spent much time mulling it in his head and learning the foundations before approaching it. And anyone who has seen him present his project KNOWS a) the passion he feels for the subject, b) the level of fundamental knowledge acquired to present his research, and c) the level of understanding on his part to make it understandable to others.</p>
<p>I'd have to agree with CountingDown. The majority of my HS career I was just spent learning because I wanted to learn. It wasn't until this year hwen I could actually put everything I've learned to produce something that was actually semi-meaningful. Basically, true research is just not something somebody does to just put it on their resume. It's just not possible. It requires so much dedicaiton, I just can't believe that someone could even begin to purport they had some something truly remarkable if they actually hadn't. It just takes too much time and dedication. 4 years studying independelty for at least 20 hours per week, and I'm just beginning to do actual research</p>
<p>But grades are important too. How would you get good grades if you doodle proofs during class? Isn't there a time and place fro everything?</p>
<p>"But grades are important too."</p>
<p>Grades are relative. A B+ in algebraic topology in HS is a few orders of magnitude more impressive than getting straight A's in very regular classes. And the higher level the class, the more the class is based on a few PSETS and a few exams total, which means you can doodle during the lectures (or not even go) if you can just read the book and still get an A. Besides at some point you realize the grade doesn't matter anymore. </p>
<p>"How would you get good grades if you doodle proofs during class? Isn't there a time and place fro everything?"</p>
<p>You have to be smarter than most people. Also for many subjects class is overrated. If you are resourceful, you can just use a few textbooks to cover everything (granted you might miss a thing or two that only the prof mentions in lecture, but that's life right?).</p>
<p>Screw grades. Grades are dumb. What you learn is what matters. I'm taking courses at a local state school and it is SOOO awesome because I'm just so free. The other day I skipped class to go to a seminar on fourier series, just because I wanted to. You could never do something like that in HS. Getting good grades does not mean going to class, taking perfect notes, and paying attention all the time. Getting good grades means knowing your stuff. Personally, although it's usulaly more difficult, I think that teaching something to yourself is a lot better than having it taught to you, so I actually think time is more valuably spent "doodling in your notebook" than listening to lecture, as long as your trying to learn things. I'd rather spend an hour studying a text by myself than sit in on a lecture (depending what its on). For that reason, I skip class a good amount of the time and my grades are fine (excpet for englihs, and I never skip that lol).</p>
<p>Yeah but it's important to remember that you are still a student, not a professional researcher. </p>
<p>Also becareful with self-studying. A lot of the time people who think they are self-studying are just fooling themselves and wasting their time.</p>