<p>What exactly does "research" mean? Does it refer to just googling information online or acquiring data for science fairs? I'm kinda confused about what people mean when they say they do "research." Does it always have to be at a college lab? And what exactly do you do at a college lab that counts as "research?" Sorry if it seems redundant, just trying to clarify my ignorance. Thanks.</p>
<p>Usually on here they mean original research, usually with a professor or through an official program/internship. (There’s usually an adult mentor involved…for the most part, people aren’t just doing experiments in their basement.)
Research in the natural sciences would probably take place mostly in a lab, but humanities/math/social science research would be a little different.</p>
<p>Research. As in scientific/academic work of the nature and content that you might see (and ideally will see) in a research journal, like Nature or Mind.</p>
<p>It is the rigorous collection, analysis, synthesis and presentation of data that constitutes research. It’s not lab-specific; there is such thing as humanities research. Writing a paper defending emotivism counts as research — but is unlikely to be taken seriously by adcoms unless it’s done in conjunction with a college professor, wins awards, or gets published. There are also more creative options. For example, you might create a computer program to mine an internet forum for data and then assess it qualitatively or quantitatively for anything of social/psychological interest. </p>
<p>Even if what you attempt doesn’t pull through, win recognition, etc you can still get points for telling adcoms you’ve spent your time that way. </p>
<p>that’s that.</p>
<p>Just another quick question, do you really need to have a program or professor/adult mentor for all these contests, such as Intel or Siemens? Is it possible to just do it on your own (think of a question, acquire data, experiment, etc.)?</p>
<p>Sure. You won’t get as much cred for it (unless you get recognized), but college adcoms will still love to hear about it, especially if it’s unique.</p>
<p>How do you contact professors for research opportunities?</p>
<p>You just find their phone number and call them. I’m doing adult stem cell research in a lab next year as a senior in high school and I got it by just calling a ton of people. I probably called/tried to contact about 40 people and someone who works at a big cancer research center (so not a professor) called me back and asked to meet with me. Then we figured everything out at the meeting. I assume it would be similar with professors. But research doesn’t always have to be with a professor. But its good to work with an expert in your field of interest.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, if you are in a research internship, are you allowed to use that data for contests like Intel or Siemens?</p>
<p>yeah, i’d like to know this as well</p>
<p>I’m not sure. I don’t plan on entering any contests. But its a research internship as part of a senior project.</p>
<p>@picklechicken37: Is just emailing them alright?</p>
<p>Whether or not you could use a group’s data is up to the group. My group was nice enough to allow me to use the data for competitions, although other groups do not allow you to.</p>
<p>From my experience, just emailing is fine. I emailed the head of the biology department at my local university as well as a senior professor, and they both forwarded the email to an assistant professor who focuses on the type of research that I’m interested in. He’s agreed to let me use his lab :)</p>
<p>But from what I’ve seen, the older professors typically don’t let you work under them. Many don’t even respond. If you’re looking for a mentor, go for a younger professor.</p>
<p>There was this great forum that also had a sort of template email, but I forget the name. You can find it pretty easily by searching under High School Life, though.</p>
<p>Definitely email the professors, calling them is weird. Alternatively, if you’re on campus you can just drop by their office.</p>
<p>Younger professors are often untenured so they cannot afford to take risks on high school students. I would say pick older (non-“assistant”) professors as long as they don’t have department chair responsibilities or anything.</p>
<p>The older ones were the ones who rejected me lol</p>
<p>I personally think calling is more effective. When I emailed I generally didn’t get responses but when I called I could ask more follow up questions and get answers right away. And if they didn’t want to help I. Pull still quickly get referred to somewhere else and call them. While calling is a little weird feeling, it’s not strange. But much more effective than emailing</p>
<p>To add to wait I just said: the senior project coordinators en outraged us to call unless we emailed really early because it often takes 2 months to get an email response because a high schooler is not very high priority on their list of people to respond to. However they answer most phone calls that they can and the response is instant.</p>
<p>Emailing is better!..also, it really doesn’t matter if you go for the assistant professor, or the full professor, actually, sometimes the full professors have more research grants and have the ability to take on more people in their lab…at least that was the case with me!</p>