Hello~ I’m a rising sophomore, and my dream schools are Harvard and Yale.
I want to do Biology or premedical in university.
Will creating papers or studies about subjects in biology help my application, even though these papers aren’t published?
Yes. Won’t hurt.
No, absolutely not. No one cares about unpublished papers. In science, papers often take many months if not years to research by carrying out experiments and then are carefully written and sent off to journals for peer review. After peer review, the journal either immediately accepts the paper as is (fairly rare), gives a conditional acceptance requiring changes to be made or comments to be addressed, or rejected. Peer review and publication is a crucial part to science - it ensures that published articles are (at least reasonably) scientifically sound. Occasionally scientists are asked to write review articles, which have a slightly different process, but those are usually by invitation only and are asked of only experts in the field.
I can assure you that no high school student can write up a meaningful scientific manuscript to get it published in a journal by themselves. You can, however, try to join a laboratory and work with a professor and his lab members to potentially get on a paper depending on your level of involvement on the project. If you do try to join a lab and contact a professor to join, make sure your heart is in the right place. Ask yourself - if you weren’t trying to get into Harvard/Yale is this something you would be interested in pursuing? Research is a major commitment. Don’t just do it to check off some hypothetical check box for your application.
Please let me know if you have any questions about biomedical research, either by posting here or messaging me directly.