<p>for example, Duke says "If you have participated in any significant research activity outside of school, please provide a brief description and limit your response to one or two paragraphs. "</p>
<p>my project didn't win any award at all, and to be honest I don't think it was very well put together. should I still include it? I think it cldn't hurt - they're not gonna ask to see the research paper or ask me to present it when i enroll are they?</p>
<p>You might as well include it. It won't hurt, and NO they won't ask you to present it.</p>
<p>hmm, how about for colleges like Yale for which everyone says don't send supplementary stuff unless its really exceptional? Cos for Yale rsearch abstracts are not given a space in the supplement, it has to be sent as supplementary material.</p>
<p>I think you should really think about how important it was to you- I mean, if you spent hours on it, include it anyways. But considering how this is Duke, there are going to be some darn good research abstracts being sent, and you don't want the admissions officers having to read sub-par supplemental material that just adds to their workload.</p>
<p>I think you have to seriously evaluate how good the abstract is and what it would contribute to your application as a whole, and then decide.</p>
<p>hmm well, </p>
<p>
[quote]
For a very small number of exceptionally talented artists, musicians, and researchers, we may find it useful to refer tapes/CDs, slides, and/or abstracts to the appropriate Yale academic department for evaluation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>wow, if it's gonna be evaluated by professors.... it's gonna fall apart and be pretty obvious that it's absolute novice work. especially when they compare it to Intel winners abstracts. I better not send it then.</p>
<p>Research is all about failure. Submit it with the lessons you learned from the research failure and what could have been done to assemble it better. My d went to a giftie school where if the science project failed they could get a A if they explained why it failed. They got a F or incomplete if they just repeated a known outcome experiment that was perfect.</p>
<p>hmm, but this is a college application, not school. in any case, I couldn't just state it's my research mentor's fault, right? :P</p>
<p>i would send it...i had the same question about my stem cell research but its worth it if your research is "higher-level" as my counselor put it ...it doesn't have to have been "successful" but make sure that the content will impress them</p>
<p>thats the point.... the issue here isn't about whether my project was successful - i wish it was. it wasn't well put together in the first place - the idea was low-level, my mentor wasn't really interested in helping me and we never really came up with a good idea.</p>
<p>note that my thread title said "not v good", not "not v successful" =/</p>
<p>oh basically the project is about this: there's is currently this method of detecting a virus by detecting some gene that's on the virus. well recently the lab I had been working at (not me) discovered a new gene. so he said just told me to use the new gene instead of the old one and call it "a new method". the only improvement was that the PCR results are more distinct, only because the gene on the virus samples would be replicated in larger amounts. that's it.</p>
<p>okay well i guess i can see how you dont feel like that is "super impressive" or anything but still, anything dealing with polymerase chain reaction and gene splicing etc will still set you apart from the crowd, and the fact you've invested time in this research will always speak words about you</p>
<p>Was it actually research, or were you just running PCR? There's a big difference. Did you have results? Otherwise, you basically just had an internship.</p>
<p>haha, no i did do a paper, but it was really substandard. so even if it's a very bad project, with extremely unimpressive, amateurish content, without anything seminal, i should send it? </p>
<p>in short, the project's just like saying i found that using a bigger hammer could smash wood better, and i didn't even create the bigger hammer myself. it's a complete no brainer.... rubbish of a project. im totally not proud of it and of the fact that i got an uninterested mentor.</p>
<p>the artistic supplement equivalent is like sending a recording of a 4th grade piano performance.</p>
<p>I don't think you're allowed to submit an abstract to Stanford. They don't want to see it.</p>
<p>Edit: Whoops, I thought I was on the Stanford forum. Nvm.</p>
<p>hmmm Fred, I might as well ask this: does Stanford accept peer recs?</p>