Some high school students who apply to colleges submit a research supplement/paper along with their application. I wanted to know what kind of research projects high school students usually participate in. I mean, high school students usually don’t possess enough knowledge about STEM or any field to come up with completely original formulas for math, or invent a new physics law, or come up with something completely original that hasn’t been discovered yet. To make breakthroughs of that magnitude usually requires advanced knowledge of STEM, and people usually discover completely new stuff after getting a Ph.D or something of that level. But high school students don’t have that advanced knowledge… yet I hear about high school students sending a ‘research supplement’ to MIT or Caltech or such top colleges.
So what kind of research projects do high school students usually participate in?
It would be great if someone can mention examples of research projects that high school students conducted, or tell me the kind or type of topics on which their research projects are usually based, whether its related to Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Biology, or anything.
Although no student from my D17’s school was accepted into this last summer, there 's a scientist (some sort of neurobiology deal) who takes in 5 or 6 students from all of Los Angeles to intern with him and do real research in his lab at USC. It’s highly competitive for obvious reasons, but every year, at least, those 5-6 kids get to observe, learn, and participate in real research at a real lab. My kid’s school has had kids admitted into the summer research internship program before.
But how does that turn into a research paper? I’ve heard of high school students sending in research papers to the colleges they applied to. Just a while ago I was reading on CC that a student sent 2 research papers to Caltech as part of their application.
Usually highschool students apply to highly competitive summer research programs at academic research institutions. In some cases students take the initiative to email professors directly who share their research interests and ask to work in the lab over the summer. The PI of the lab almost always hands the high school student off to a grad student, post-doc, or research technician to mentor/train. (In my experience, the PIs themselves has little to no direct contact with the high school student themselves.) The mentor then has the high school student “help” with their projects. (“Help” is in quotes because sometimes the “help” is not very helpful. I’ve mentored a high school student who was a HUGE help, one who was absolutely awful, and several in between.) If the research that the summer student “helps” the mentor do ends up getting published, depending on how much the student contributed and/or the authorship policy in the lab, the high school student may also be on the paper.