Hi guys. I’m wondering if I should send my research paper to Harvard. I did graduate level work for the past year and a half at the university I live near, and according to my professor I’ve gotten further on the project than any other high school student he’s had. However I did submit my research to the Siemens competition and it didn’t make it past the first round. I’m not really sure what I should do. Thanks for your help!
P.S. If some people who really know about Harvard (ex. gibby) reply, that’d be phenomenal. Thanks!
You should not. Feel free to send a one page (max) abstract which delineates your contribution. Actual Siemens winners don’t submit their papers. The readers simply won’t have time/inclination to read or skim beyond a page.
Basically, you don’t want to water down your app. They’re going to spend X number of minutes reading your package. D’you want them to really probe 10 pages or quickly muddle through 15? You want the former and not the latter.
Yep. I interviewed an EA applicant whom my school (Yale) accepted. Later he applied and was accpeted to PTon. He was an Siemens winner and only submitted an abstract. He really anguished between Yale and Princeton but we ended up losing him to PTon b/c he settled on engineering and felt PTon was a better fit.
I think I have an answer here- I submitted a really informal summary of my research completed and also added what I learned from the experience. So I was able to add an experience and something personable to my straight research. You may want to try something similar
It’s past the application deadline. If something new happens, you can ask admissions if it would be good to send in, but if this is past research, and you didn’t submit it before, why would you submit it now? Was the research listed on the common app? And did the professor who knows your research cover it in a recommendation letter?
The paper would’ve been submitted through the online application portal. I did list the research on my common app and it’s still an ongoing project. I didn’t have my professor send in a recommendation letter however. I decided against sending the paper in anyway but I sent them a brief abstract. Thanks everyone!
I’d still suggest asking your mentor to submit a recommendation. A research mentor can explain your research and convey your ideas and your work better than anybody else. Moreover, it would help validate your work attest to your researching skills. If he/she turns out to be an alumnus, then I think (and I hope) that it will have a somewhat greater impact too