Thought about this a lot the past couple of years, and wanted to start a brainstorming thread as the title states. How can high school students demonstrate an interest in STEM subjects/activities, if they don’t have the AP subjects at their school, established clubs, or gifted resources. The past few years have seen unprecedented upheaval. But there have always been students out there who are musicians, athletes, attending a bare-bones public school or just busy caring for family members. They’re also interested in STEM subjects, but require help in getting the experiences they need to foster their curiosity, build their confidence and guide them along this path.
By STEM, this could perhaps be broken down into sub-categories of student interest:
Perhaps we could start with classic ways students have pursued their interest in each area. It would be great to hear from students/parents about what experiences they had in high school before heading off to college. Any insights that can help young students without much current guidance find their own journey would be great, especially since the landscape has been so unpredictable the past few years.
Many community colleges may offer a one day or week program, free or inexpensive, especially in suburban areas.
Boy and Girl Scout programs have summer camps or badges.
Some colleges were offering low cost or free day STEM camps.
Army Navy facilities have paid programs. Application is open now or will be soon for 2023
Gardening, agriculture, landscape employers, local governments, civic groups may have opportunities related to saving energy, protecting the environment.
STEM is intertwined in the economy. Many local needs even for data entry, website maintnance, app development.
If one could start a club, there are science and math competitions
Society of women in engineering does a ton of free programming for girls.
If a student lives near a college, it’s worth looking into their summer programs for high school students.
Lego used to host robotics camps and competitions when my d was little.
In terms of academics, stem students should take bio, chem, and physics and if one of those is offered AP, that course. They should also shoot for getting to the highest level of math offered at their school.
Our D’s person experience to prepare for engineering:
Engineering related Ecs:
Sci oly
Robotics camps
Stem camps
SWE programs
Shadowing
Academics:
Bio, chem, physics, AP physics C (both mechanics and E&m), AP stats, AP calc, orgo, CS, and three pre engineering courses offered at her school.
Start by getting strong grades in school courses. Then do well on SAT/ACT. Apply to colleges. 95% of all STEM programs are happy with those.
For the other 10-20 STEM focused schools, you can part the Red Sea and still come up short. If your kid is truly interested in STEM, then going to just about any school that has a good research based undergraduate curriculum with graduate school opportunities will do. Almost all the best CS programmers I know are largely self-taught.
Now, if the goal is to get into the ivy league and such, it is a different matter altogether.
Take science and math classes and get good grades. That’s all the vast majority of schools care about. You can do a whole bunch of the rest, but I wouldn’t unless you’re deeply interested in it.
Great insights already. Re: the approach of just getting strong grades and doing well on standardized tests. Although that is great feedback to keep a high schooler’s perspective balanced, it almost feels like this advice could short-change a kid with potential, but with fewer standard STEM opportunities. The more experiences they explore, the better they can identify their interests (and importantly, things that they don’t want to pursue.
For example, conducting experiments, or research. What have other kids done, perhaps on their own or by seeking out help, that could be interesting?
School isn’t always inspiring; so it’s important that kids figure out ways they can discover interests (either virtually or in-person). @Hippobirdy and @momofboiler1 had some practical suggestions, some in-school, some out-of-school, that are great ideas students can think about. Building curious, independent thinkers requires tinkering, problem-solving and experiences. Hopefully information on this thread can assist younger students coming out of an era of limited opportunities to make things happen for themselves.
My now college sophomore EE daughter participated in the Army Educational Outreach Program: Research & Engineering Apprenticeship Program (REAP) the summers before hs senior year and college freshman.
The professor sponsoring the program at our local state uni, is EE. So that is what his program focused on. D was able to learn concepts and topics she did not have access to in high school, such as MatLab, Verilog, digital logic stuff, micro controllers, etc. She was taught by a female EE PhD student for both summers.
This was significant, D was able to see herself as an EE student. Of note, D and her close friend (also female) both were in this program for the two summers and are now both at the local uni, majoring in ECE.
I am so thankful for the outreach program, can’t recommend these programs enough.
My understanding is that the OP was looking for ways to demonstrate interest. Discovering ones areas of interest is certainly important for those who don’t yet know, but different from that.
@thealternative do you have a high school student who is interested in STEM? What has this student already done.
My STEM undergrad and professional school kid did absolutely nothing STEM related in high school to show “interest”. ECs were mainly music and one sport per year. Nothing STEM related. Didn’t matter one bit.
Aha - then my intent wasn’t clear, and that is my fault. You bring up an excellent point. It’s helping students discover potential interests in order to demonstrate interest. The practical examples mentioned show how the former (discovery) led to the latter (demonstrated interest).
In the words of a popular meme, “Why can’t it be both?”
My D was attends a T20 engineering program and except for being a member of her high school robotics team, she had pretty much no STEM activities. And even on robotics her role on the team was not very engineering focused (she didn’t do design or anything) - she had athletic activity that took up too much time to take on that large and important of a role. She worked as a math tutor and took lots of math and science classes, but that’s about it.
I think instead she presented herself as an interesting and well rounded student. Maybe that was a turn off for some schools but it worked for others!
It’s true, this thread was inspired by my kid’s current journey, but I’m the type of person who really enjoys threads where the information given doesn’t just help the original poster, but other students/parents who may have similar questions/situations.
In my kid’s case, their very small public school has been losing important APs with three teachers retiring (Physic, Chemistry, Calculus, French, Art History, Psychology has gone online this year…). There are no maths/science/engineering clubs, teachers don’t really wish to facilitate clubs after 3 p.m. So students are there mostly for learning, with way less extra-curricular clubs than most high schools.
It should be noted that this is an independent study school, where many kids also have outside interests or personal reasons for attending. My kid happens to be an athlete.
Math has been my kid’s preferred subject. But three years of the local math circle was a poor fit. Competition math just wasn’t an enjoyable experience for enough reasons so this year, it’s been dropped. Instead, my kid has been using their math skills in their sport to evaluate performance and change competitive strategies.
Also, my kid can’t fit in lab science this junior year because their schedule means they can’t be on campus much. Advanced Bio, Honors Chem and Physics have all been taken in previous years.
In my kid’s case, figuring out how to develop skills in Chemistry and Physics, and thus demonstrate interest, is where we are. Mechanical engineering would be their preferred undergrad degree (this far). But perhaps a masters that mixes practical math and engineering would also be a good fit. (Competition math was not a fit for my kid, practical use of math is.)
I’m not sure any of this matters. So many kids change out if or into STEM majors once in college. My kid applied undeclared and got two STEM majors in undergrad.
She loved math and science but did absolutely zero anything related to this in high school except take the courses…and not even accelerated ones.
Sounds like your kid had an excellent experience and two STEM majors is tremendous. But since your kid is done, as are many other long-term posters on cc, your family is in a different place at this point in time.
Your point is well-taken that in admissions, perhaps none of this matters. Because admissions is a closed process that we don’t see in detail, that may very well be true.
This thread was started because having options, guidance and potential pathways matters to me, and to other parents who are still guiding kids in high school. Many kids like mine were out of school learning online for 1.5 years. It was a craptastic experience for my kid, and they had parental support! A lot of other kids were left twisting in the breeze by their schools.
So finding experiences to close the huge gap that happened is seriously important. A lot of kids got crushed by this locking down. My kid’s curiosity and creativity was blunted by the screen time and lack of human interaction.
Basically, kids were stifled. Looking for practical ways that they can expand their horizons again. Because frankly, school was the not place many of these kids found support to foster their growth.
Does the school have a robotics team? If not, will other teams allow your kiddo to join their team (I know some kids who did this). Or are there teams at other lower level schools where your kiddo could mentor the younger kids? Are there any math tutoring companies in town (Mathnasium, Kumon, etc.) where they could work? Can your student start a club if there is something in particular that interests them? Like maybe start a STEM club and bring in speakers with different jobs in various STEM related fields to talk about their careers.
I know of college confidential it looks like all kids are getting this amazing research and hands on experience in high school, but honestly I don’t think that’s typical in most cases. Where we live almost no one has those types of experiences. IMO, I don’t think schools expect a high schooler to have hands on skills in Chem and Physics. Taking honors and AP classes in them shows interest. In high school kids are still trying to figure out their interests.
Thank you for taking the time to brainstorm. No robotics team - actually no teams of anything STEM. Not joking when I say kids get their STEM experiences out side of school. It’s not viewed as the school’s mandate, really.
It is very likely my kid will graduate without AP Chemistry or Physics because the school stopped offering them.
My kid is trying to social distance somewhat until December due to their competitive season in their sport. Assistant coaching has been done in the past but trying to stay healthy and not have sick days has made this really hard for the modern kid playing sports. (I also grew up in this sport and assisted coaches as a teen; the last 2.5 years have turned this model on it’s head and it’s been a real challenge to negotiate.)
Your suggestions may not work for my kid at this moment, but there are probably other students out there who can take your advice and run with it, which is great.
Might have to resort to potentially virtual options: virtual tutoring, virtual STEM something to engage their interest. This is problematic because there’s already too much virtual time spent on the computer, IMO.
If I am reading your posts correctly, it seems like your child is in a school, by choice, that just doesn’t offer the STEM experiences you want, because they are trying to work around an athletic schedule. It seems to be that your student is going to have a different application than maybe some STEM applicants, and that’s OK. When we were going through the application process we got the message from many AO’s that they are looking for different. They don’t want to fill up their class with students who all had the same experiences in high school. They appreciated students who showed a passion for an activity rather than one who was clearly just trying to check the boxes with activities they thought the AO’s wanted to see. Showing an aptitude in math and science, through coursework and test grades is helpful, but your child is also showing other strengths and skills through their commitment and success in their sport. I think it’s great that you are looking for some STEM opportunities and maybe something will pan out, but if not, I would recommend your child embrace what makes them interesting in their application. Another option would be to transfer to a more typical school with the activities, classes and experiences you are looking for, but I suspect that means scaling back on the time spent on the athletic activity your child is in, which I suspect is not an option.
I get it…my daughter was in regular high school – but missed a lot of school due to her sport which was not school related. It was hard to get involved with school activities that were flexible enough to allow the absences she needed for competitions and practices. She did find some but it was a balancing act and she could not get as involved in those activities as she would have liked because they were second priority. We did talk about moving to a different school at times that would maybe work better with her sport, but she did not want to give up the “normal” experience. And those school related activities were important to her. She probably sacrificed a little with her sport for that decision but for HER the balance was important. Her school also did not offer as many AP classes as I see others do here on CC and the way they did their scheduling, it was hard to fit a lot in. My D took AP Bio but not AP Chem or Physics. Those she took as honors classes. She did take math through Calc BC and senior year took a Dual Enrollment math class at a local university. I’m not sure if she could do it all over again if she’d make the same course choices, but there isn’t much she could do about the number of AP’s she took.
Yes, your assessment is spot on. I, like your daughter, had a regular high school schedule and sport, and music, and made many of the same choices. It’s why we’re trying something a bit different with the kid. So the combo of sport, humble school options, and tough scheduling means thinking outside of the box.
That being said, my kid’s school also caters to atypical students who have not done well at a standard type of school. They could use the suggestions. And so could students at schools that do perhaps offer robotics or the math team, but that doesn’t speak to them.
Although waiting until university can unlock many paths (@thumper1’s daughter had a great self-directed journey), why wait when kids can figure out some likes/dislikes now?
The examples parents of college students have provided are excellent! Would love for them to keep coming. It’s so interesting to hear how other students got where they did.
Why wait? Because so many 17 and 18 year olds, or younger, don’t have any real idea of what their true interests really are. And those interests can change dramatically.
Many colleges have core curriculums that require courses in many different areas so that students get a taste of things other than what they “think” is their interest. And many find something totally different that piques their interest.
In addition, many if not most, college students switch majors multiple times during college.
And lastly, career choices don’t necessarily have to be aligned with a specific college major (of course things like engineering are the exception). Many students find jobs and careers that have nothing to do with their actual major in college.
College is a time for students to hone their interests and make these choices. This does not have to be done in high school.