I was recently thinking about how admissions officers quantify research. A few summers ago, I did a research paper with a professor at Columbia University, but in doing so, I turned down a few “prestigious” summer programs like SSTP and SIP. Now that my younger brother is applying to these programs, I was wondering how AOs view doing research independently with a professor vs. a reputable research program, which one they value more, and the pros and cons of their minds. I was also wondering if the university prestige matters for these professors’ research projects (i.e., is doing research with a Penn professor more valuable than an Eastern Michigan professor) like it does with the prestige of the summer programs?
The best research opportunity is one where you feel deeply engaged in the topic, invested in the research question, competently guided/supported/mentored, and inspired and curious to keep digging deeper into the data. That’s worth more than any nebulous notion of “prestige” and genuine curiosity, originality, and engagement will impress AOs more than a fancy name.
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Program is better. They don’t have time to assess whether you got this opportunity with the prof because he is your uncle or family friend or similar.
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True, that is what I thought. Obviously, the research experience is what you write about it. If you can show passion, you can turn any research experience with any random professor into something better than someone writing nonsense about their time at RSI. The AOs will only see what you write; what they care about is what you gain from it.
Also, a benefit I would say a benefit about doing research with a professor is that it’s free vs. $4-12k for a uni research program.
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Hmm. I wonder if they really care if it’s your uncle you are doing research with. Wouldn’t it matter more to them what you gain from it? My friend got a NASA internship through nepotism, and he got into CMU ED for aero. His NASA internship was his #1 EC, so I’m not sure if they automatically assume it’s nepo, especially with so many kids cold emailing profs and with a LOR from them.
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You are trying to read tea leaves 
First, AOs give much less weight to having “research” on an app than you may think, b/c so many people have it these days. As with service trips or starting a non-profit, it has been done by so many students, in so many forms, that it has it is now overdone. Fwiw, the ‘in’ thing at the moment is doing old-school teenage paid jobs.
Second, I have been told by AOs that they don’t give particular weight to the ‘pay to play’ options - even the ‘selective’ ones- simply for having done it, partly b/c there are so many, but mostly b/c they give an unfair advantage to students whose families can afford them. A strong essay demonstrating what the student brought to, and then did with, the experience is the plus from the research experience, not the simple fact of having ‘done research at X’. The summer programs whose names carry weight are very few, highly selective- and free to the student.
Third, to the AOs I have known an unusually high end (or early) research or other internship / experience automatically implies connections of some sort- in real life, how else does a 15/16 year old get that role? (There have been students on CC who claim meaningful research work starting in Grade 8). So, NASA not through one of their student programs? some sort of connection- teacher, neighbor, relation, whatever. Again, though, the key isn’t the fact that they have done it, but what they have done with the experience. Note that it doesn’t even have to be a positive outcome: I know a student whose opening to their essay was about how they discovered through their summer research experience that what they thought was their ‘passion’ wasn’t that at all, and that the experience had led them to re-evaluate and make a total change of direction- and the rest of the essay was about what they have done to implement that change. They were very successful in college apps.
ps, you give away your inexperience when you assume that AOs see prestige the way students do: you can’t equate undergraduate ‘prestige’ with subject specific ‘prestige’. At the graduate school level (where meaningful science research happens), reachy-reach schools for undergrad can be safeties for grad school, esp in the sciences.
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Colleegmom’s post is spot on. OP would do well to heed the advice.
Admissions officers want to see authenticity and genuine interest more than who you did your research with. Right now, kids are PAYING to do summer research programs. Probably one of the most boring ways to spend a summer, but colleges are aware of pay to play activities. I’m not saying you are paying to play, btw. I just don’t think they are super impressed by research.
Research done as a college student matters much more, if it’s needed for a particular career path.
In college, my D did research with a professor she sought out because she was interested in what he was doing. This prof was not at her college, but at a university in a different state. She also contacted other profs, but this one was the one who “bit.” Her first real job was researching in a real lab. Now she is in an extremely competitive grad program. They were more interested in the summer research she did with the professor than the paid research she did at the prestigious institution where her lab was located.
Someone else’s outcome might be entirely different. But that’s down the line for you. I think you’re better getting highly involved in something that interests you. If that’s research, great. But don’t worry if it’s one Professor or a summer program.
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Well regarded summer research programs have high placement rates into colleges that you may think are good. As an example nj gov school for sciences had 50% of their 60 person cohort place into hypsm and 80% into t20 a few years ago.
This is because the process of being selected for the program as an extra external validation of the kid. At a minimum it means the school picked you ad the top kid in science from the school and nominated you. And then that pool is condensed down from some 400 to 50 or 60. Someone had time to look at you thoroughly. RSI is another example of a program that has a good record of college placements. I think Simons at stony Brook places well. Any random individual professor will do a poorer job than these numbers. There are several others. You should ask people who had stem kids place into colleges rather than the general population on CC
Research impact varies from very little as others have written, to huge for highly selective programs like RSI (most of those participants get into multiple HYPSM colleges).
When it comes to research with individual professors, you need some sort of external validation for it to be valuable (unless you are doing it with a very well known professor or institution). This can be either a publication in a peer-reviewed paper or a well known science award like ISEF.
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OP should do the program they are most interested in doing.
IME AOs at highly rejective colleges (that’s what we are talking about, right?) value research, and they don’t care where it comes from…with a prof at a local uni, or a paid program like through Polygence or Lumiere (both excellent, but there are many players doing this), or a selective enrollment opportunity. With that said, do they value research more than a job or other ECs? That’s a more difficult question to answer.
I haven’t heard an AO say they give any thought about how the student might have gotten the research opportunity or if they paid for it through a program (in some cases they would never even know that). I also haven’t heard the need to see a publication…the timing for many HS school students to be published before college apps are submitted often doesn’t work out, not to mention many opportunities don’t lead to published research, yet the experience is still valuable.
I also see and hear AOs referencing how many admits in their recent class did research, like Penn’s press release last year where Whitney Soule mentioned that one-third of admitted students did research. That’s a tell as to what they value.
She also shared that nearly one-third of admitted students did research during high school, 40% of admitted students worked during high school, and 80% engaged in community service activities.
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I generally agree with many of the posts above, but I’ll add the following:
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It depends on the college to some degree. AOs aren’t specialists in any field of research. A few colleges may use departmental resources to validate certain selective research claims on applications, but most don’t. As expected, the quality and authenticity of your research matters more to the colleges that validate (even if selectively).
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Because of their proliferations, research with individual professor is only valuable if the work can be validated (and few colleges do that).
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Paid summer programs (other than those that are need blind and meet 100% need such as SSP) generally don’t have the impact that applicants assume. They can still be very meaningful extracurricular activities and can demonstrate students’ strong interests, however.
Correlation is NOT causation. Kids getting in to a research program who then get into top research U’s does not mean that “doing research” is better/worse than other EC’s, it just means that those kids tend to have OTHER things that Adcom’s look for.
I know kids whose research projects (in HS) were-- to be honest- of marginal value. They didn’t contribute much, and they didn’t learn much, and it was another thing to add to an already overblown application. The “prestigiosity” of either the professor or the institution is also irrelevant… it’s like being the intern who gets Elon Musk’s latte every morning. Nobody with any understanding of corporate America thinks you are advising Musk on strategy or helping him assess three competing technologies in deciding which one to fund.
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Interesting, but this is someone from Penn, right? It’s probably safe to assume that MANy applicants from Penn come from well to do families. Many of those students could have paid to do research, which we know is a hot EC for certain kids at the moment.
I’m more impressed by the numbers of students who worked. My thought is that having a paying job is always going to look good to AO’s. A steady and meaningful volunteer gig is good too.
Re getting into a very competitive summer research program, that’s certainly going to be helpful. However, so many other competitive summer opportunities and awards will also help. To go off topic for a moment, this long running list comes to mind. List of Top, Prestigious Awards - #1268 by solasky
The most recent update to the list starts at #1266.
Back to the topic…
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This seems directed at my post, and I certainly didn’t say nor imply doing research means the student will get into a highly rejective school.
I pointed out the fact that some schools value research as that’s what they communicate at student admissions sessions, press releases, counselor meetings, etc. I clearly stated that we don’t know how research stacks up with the other things they also value, e.g., ECs like working or athletics or community service etc.
Yes, this is from Whitney Soule, Dean of Admissions at Penn. I agree with you that many schools value working and volunteering as well, including Penn (it’s right there in the press release). It’s impossible to say whether any of these are perceived to be great than another because it’s so subjective and context is also important.
Hopefully, OP will find ample opportunities for interesting ECs and research, if that’s what they decide to do.
MW, I was NOT responding to your post, but since we agree, no harm no foul!
The “fetishization” of certain activities among a certain group of parents and students is fascinating to me. Whether it was building houses in Haiti a few years back (meanwhile, there is a city 20 minutes from where I live where housing instability, homelessness, and a crumbling housing stock means they are perpetually looking for Habitat volunteers), starting your own non-profit to address the underfunded issue of “how to make a gluten free donut for those with celiac”, or now- research-- it’s just fascinating.
First of all, most HS kids don’t want to hear that there are actual skills that need to be attained before you can be valuable (or even helpful) on a research team. So whether it’s learning R or a specialized software program-- nope, they want to be curing cancer, not logging notes for the team. Second, most HS kids don’t realize that “research” doesn’t come in nice bite-sized portions. A team could be funded for a 5 year grant-- where all the exciting stuff happens in the last five months- but that mean 4+ years of “drudgery” and foundational work-- and if you are staffed in year 2, that’s a LOT of drudgery! Third, most HS kids would rather work on the sexy stuff (anything with the words Robotics, BioMedical, and of course- Cancer) and not what happens every single day at every university and research lab in the world- which might be a study on plastic residue in plankton or fertility rates in frogs or poring through the latest census data to understand food insecurity in rural zip codes.
But so many interesting ways a HS kid can spend their time…
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This might be useful discussion for the parent forum, but the OP is not asking about which EC to pursue. They are specifically asking about research, and which path within research is considered better.
I had a good deal of visibility into how much impact research can make, as my son won one of top research prizes a few years ago based in large part on the research paper he wrote. In terms of admission impact, every one of the dozen plus students who had applied to Columbia and had won a similar prize received a likely letter from Columbia a few weeks later. That is not random. I don’t remember the exact count, but a large number also received a likely letter to Yale. Again, not random. The average number of HYPSM admittances for this group was over 3.
I also have visibility into a pretty well known research program he attended during a prior summer (a couple of notches below RSI level). About half of those students got into an Ivy+ college. In those cases, the well-known research program simply complemented an otherwise strong profile.
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I do think AOs value research, but I also feel any EC that demonstrates commitment and perseverance is viewed favorably. That could be a job or a volunteer gig. This comment hits the mark:
One of my kids did independent research that received external validation at multiple levels, but pursuit of accolades was never the goal. The work was driven by genuine curiosity and pursuit of knowledge.
On purely egalitarian grounds, I disdain paid research programs. But, for students with a genuine interest in research who perhaps need structure and can afford to pay to play, they fill a niche. It’s probably also an easy way to get a decent letter of recommendation.
As far as prestige of program, I don’t think it matters. There are many threads on here created by students who are confused as to why they weren’t accepted to xyz college after participating in its summer program. Ultimately, the value of research lies in doing the actual work (of which drudgery and setbacks are common) and determining whether research is a path of interest.
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And the average number of elite college admittances of my kid’s cohort at the fast food restaurant where he worked (night shift, cleaner) was ALSO over 3. (zero to Stanford, full disclosure).
I wouldn’t tell anyone to work the night shift in a uniform as a way to get into an elite college (although my kid’s essay about getting grease stains out of polyester was hilarious) even though he and his co-workers did extremely well admissions-wise.
The point is that adcom’s care about everything… paid work, volunteer work, research, hobbies which show deep commitment, etc. So for kids to perseverate about which TYPE of research is going to be more prestigious, and will the letter of recommendation from a “famous” professor vs. a run of the mill professor…the adults on here should not add fuel to that fire. Do research if that’s what you want to do and can do it (transportation, access, don’t need the money from a paid job, can find a sponsor), but don’t do it if there are other things you’d rather be doing.
Friend of my son’s from college- who is leading a team at a “highly prestigious” lab as an MD/PhD (elite program) now, did no research in HS. He went from server to assistant manager to shift supervisor to manager at a pizza restaurant during HS. That also shows tenacity and work ethic and all that jazz.
Don’t fetishize research for a 17 year old!
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For kids that are academically inclined it is not a bad way to spend time in high school. Among other things they learn about experimental design, and more importantly reading literature and making sense of it. Those are valuable skills. If you are sufficiently motivated, you can even educate yourself on where the cutting edge is in a certain field, how it is being used, and whether you have any interest in it at all, as opposed to what is being taught in introductory high school classes.
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Fantastic accomplishment that shows there is no one way to become a top researcher.
What I’ve seen in our cohort of kids who enter college as accomplished researchers are awards and opportunities received earlier. Several are Goldwater Scholars, grant recipients, and published authors. They receive personalized attention from their universities in the form of dedicated advisors, research funding, and access to exclusive research/internship opportunities. Colleges are rolling out the red carpet for these students.
I don’t think anyone is “fetishizing” doing research, but OP specifically asked about it. I agree there are a plenty of productive ways for high schoolers to spend their time.
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