My “foster” son is a sophomore and doing exceptionally well in college, working with a professor already doing research and is heavily leaning toward PhD program in neuroscience. We are pretty clueless and while I am vaguely aware there are summer opportunities where he could do research somewhere else, learn and get paid, I am not sure where to start. There is always Google 
but I wanted to reach out to the CC community for specific guidance. Anything on the east coast I should direct him towards? He is most interested in Schizophrenia research, as that is what he is working on now and he really enjoys it. He is a minority and economically disadvantaged. Any ideas? Thanks!
Wanted to add - he is a HSF and Gates Millennium Scholar, in the honors program, president of his residence hall, active in the music program etc. Not a one trick pony 
There’s the AMGEN scholars program, which has research sites at many prestigious school. Harvard SROH and SHURP, UPenn SUIP, Cornell MBG-REU, etc. Especially since he’s a minority, I encourage him to look into those. He can apply throug the Leadership Alliance to 3 research sites with one application, Harvard and UPenn’s program are part of that, but there’s also many more! You can also apply to UPenn separately. In these, you get matched with a faculty mentor when admitted according to your research interests, so I assume it’ll be someone in Neuro.
I have been admitted to most of those and am currently getting a PhD, so feel free to ask any questions
Ps: For a PhD program, no one really cares about your extracurriculars for admissions, they care about your ability to conduct good research. So, doing school and research alone would make him a very impressive “one trick pony” in the eyes of an adcom. Trying to impress by doing many different things at the same time is more useful for medical school.
Thanks @Bioenchilada ! He is a give back kind of person, so he isn’t doing the extracurriculars to impress but because he feels the need to and enjoys them but good to know if the workload gets too heavy to manage other stuff too, it will not hurt him if he has to decrease involvement.
Appreciate your response!
Agreed with the Leadership Alliance. He can also go to the NSF website and look up REUs - here are the biological sciences ones (https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.jsp?unitid=5047).
I would recommend that he not limit himself to the East Coast unless there’s some specific reason. When he wants to go to a PhD program, he will do better off if he leaves himself open to anywhere geographically. The best program for him might be on the West Coast or Midwest or South or wherever. It’ll be good for him to have a summer experience maybe outside his comfort zone and potentially a really good, well-known professor in the field.
Here are a few more programs to check out. I don’t know if they all offer neuroscience.
https://grad.ucla.edu/admissions/diversity/summer-programs-for-undergraduate-research-spur/
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/graduate-school/programs/non-degree-programs/surf.html
http://www.mayo.edu/mgs/programs/summer-undergraduate-research-fellowship
While I was looking up these links, I found this list which includes some of the above programs:
https://www.aamc.org/members/great/61052/great_summerlinks.html
Good luck with the search! I’m sure that he’ll be accepted to a great program.
@Bioenchilada
@ScienceGirlMom
@juliet
Wanted to follow up with this and let you know my foster son completed 10 weeks as part of the RiSE program at Rutgers University. He did research with a well known, well published researcher in his field. Best of all - he LOVED it! Learned a lot, grew more independent and confident as well as more exposed to other schools by his fellow participants. Thank you so much for your guidance. We’ll see what happens next summer, but this summer was a terrific learning experience for him.
I’m glad to hear that everything went well! Thanks for coming back to follow up on the thread.