Hi!
I’m really interested in doing research, but I wasn’t really sure of what colleges would accept as a “supplement” in the app. A lot of colleges let you submit any research that you’ve done, but is this limited to the typical “in-a-lab-with-chemicals” research or can this be polling voters?
I guess my question is: What qualifies research as application-worthy?
Although I am an “in-a-lab-with-chemicals” kind of researcher, I know that there are many kinds of research. I think whether research is application worthy depends what the outcome of the research is. If, for example, you are hired by an icecream company to conduct polls to help determine what should be their newest icecream flavor and do the data analysis involved, that might be something valid to put on your application. In this case, there is an anticipated outcome that your data will directly affect - a new icecream flavor for a company.
If, on the other hand, you are just randomly polling people about stuff, that is not application worthy as it has no purpose.
@mademoiselle2308 Would conducting a survey/polling research in-person in my community (primary research) and also reading scholarly articles (secondary research), and then finally coming to a conclusion in the form of a paper be considered application-worthy research?
If this isn’t under the guidance of a professor or polling agency there’s virtually zero chance you are going to get published. I would say that unless you are working for someone (professor, campaign, business, polling agency) it isn’t going to mean much. I mean it’s certainly an activity that’s better than twiddling your thumbs but I can’t really see a high schooler, completely unsupervised, engaging in a quality/meaningful research project.
I completely agree with @iwannabe_Brown. You can, of course, write a paper, but if it isn’t published in a journal, then there really is no point. Furthermore, without the guidance of an expert in your field of interest, it is unlikely that you will uncover anything that hasn’t been discovered before or get published in a journal. If you are truly interested in research, try either contacting professors at a university close to you or applying for research programs next summer.
Eh, I’ll probably be the lone dissenter here, but I disagree. Professorial supervision, while certainly helpful all around and needed in resource-heavy disciplines, isn’t an inherence of good research. Good research is good research, respectability politics aside.
If you’re talking mathematics or philosophy, realms contained entirely in individual minds, this is especially apparent. Provided s/he has the talent and the curiosity, a high school student could be fully capable of unraveling a new theorem on his/her own. No guidance or legitimization needed from someone with a doctorate: The proof is in the proof. The work speaks for itself.
Take Galois, for rexample. He wasn’t much older than any of us when he single-handedly developed Galois Theory and anticipated the development of modern algebra. The kid worked in mentor-less solitude and ended up revolutionizing mathematics.
OK, I know I’m veering far from the subject of this thread, which lies in the social sciences. But the point is valid: Ideas don’t have to be vetted or sculpted by university faculty to be powerful and legitimate. They can stand on their own. I think submitting independent research is fine as long as you are 100% confident in its potency and relevancy (and you have checked meticulously that it complies with the most rigorous standards of your field). This type of research is a rarity, for sure, but it’s a possibility as far as I’m concerned.
Edit: This is mostly in response to the comment about unsupervised research being less than meaningful. I agree that getting it published is (typically) the best metric of success, and that this should be the end goal.
OP could volunteer for a political campaign. He or she hasn’t indicated even a knowledge of polling or how to interpret, analyze, or present results. Remember, this is about college admissions. It isn’t a term paper, nor do many colleges have staff to grade this as a teacher would. Best is to work with adults who presumably guide.
Correct, and the vast majority of high schoolers do not know how to do good research - including designing and conducting meaningful, novel research entirely on their own. Notice that no where in my post did I speak in absolutes. Of course there is a chance that OP is a social science superstar capable of constructing a rigorous poll that would lead to an interesting finding and then write up said results in the greater context of the field in a way that would pass peer review and be published, but if you’re asking me to wager which is more likely, I’m way more comfortable betting that OP simply cannot pull this off on his/her own without any supervision from anyone who has formal training, and it would take some staggering odds for me to even consider betting that OP could.
Meaningful is also a sliding scale. Do I believe OP could rigorously poll his/her student body to answer some question relating to something directly affecting the school at this very moment? Yes. Do I believe this could be meaningful? Yes. Would it be meaningful to people outside of the school? Probably not. We all know this isn’t the type of meaningful at play here. We are talking about meaningful enough to be considered on par with someone who is working for a professor/campaign/polling agency/business.
Ok, go find me 5 papers published in even remotely reputable journals for those disciplines with the sole author (or all of the authors) being high school students alone. Extra points if the articles are less than 5 years old.
@iwannabe_Brown Despite your competitive rhetoric (in the most literal sense, point scales and all), it seems that we mostly see eye to eye. As I noted rather explicitly in my concluding paragraph, talents like that are indeed rare — truly and unimpeachably rare. If it were a matter of betting I would, of course, be planted firmly on your side.
The point of my little protestation was not to advocate for the intrinsic value of all, or even most, unsupervised high school research; it was simply to point out the theoretical validity of intellectual contributions from teenagers (and teenagers alone). This was an important truth that I believe had not been honored in the conversation: rarity does not preclude existence.
Perhaps I take this stuff to heart. There’s a pernicious sort of policing in academic circles that emphasizes “legitimacy” — PhD, tenure, etc — over vision and insight. Of course, there’s a lot to be said for experience, but this often creates a barrier for brilliant new scientists, mathematicians, et al. who want to change the status quo (Take Galois: he had his papers rejected repeatedly before anyone took the time to consider their gravity.)
So while I agree on the eminent value of mentors — I certainly couldn’t have done my own research without them! — I feel it’s equally important to acknowledge and cultivate other pathways to impactful research. Institutional connections do not a scientist make. And vice versa.
Anyway, to get back to the specific case of the thread, I agree that it’s good advice for OP to seek out someone with more experience if they’re at all unsure of how to navigate research.
Thanks for your help guys! Should I just cold-email a professor?
Yep, that’s what I did. Look up some local universities and sort through lists of people in your chosen department until you find a few with research interests matching your own. Then skim through some of their papers, published work, etc, and craft an email that references both their scholarship and your intersecting passion/ideas. Express earnest interest in getting involved in research, in some capacity, and briefly outline your qualifications. Thank them expressly.
The majority will ignore you, and a large fraction of the rest will send consolatory emails about how they’re busy. But there’s a strong possibility one or two might respond if you’re convincing! Keep sending out batches of emails until you hear back from someone. If you’re persistent, it will happen 
Pro tip: Junior faculty members — assistant professors, for example, and recently appointed researchers — are generally more willing to take a gamble on high school students. They’re also especially flattered by someone commenting on the merit of their research and taking the time to reach out.
@astroknot, fair enough, although I don’t think the tenor of your post made it clear how much of a long-shot you thought it was. (“This type of research is a rarity, for sure, but it’s a possibility as far as I’m concerned.”) If I were a high schooler, this sounds like it’s on par with an ivy league acceptance.
I think the rarity of such a case is so extreme that to bring it up is actually detrimental to OP. It’d be like telling someone with no basketball experience who is thinking about going to the basketball court and starting to learning to play basketball in the hopes of getting a scholarship to college that they could wind up with a scholarship to Duke just by doing things on their own. Is it possible? Sure, anything is possible. Is it wise to tell them that or worth dissenting with posters saying things like “no, there’s virtually no chance you’ll get that scholarship practicing on your own, you should get a coach, you should join a team, etc?” I don’t think so, but maybe I’m in the wrong for not being encouraging enough of young minds.
I think it’s interesting you keep returning to Galois, a 19th century mathematician working nearly 200 years ago. Maybe it’s my bias in the sciences, which are vastly different from the 19th century (I mean it’s even vastly different from 19 years ago), but it feels almost disingenuous to use him as an example of how OP could do it alone, and I think the fact that you probably can’t find someone more recent to use as an example is precisely because it’s so exceedingly rare that it’s not even worth discussing, but as I said above, maybe I’m just being a wet blanket.
Anyway, your advice in your last post is spot on.
OP is a rising senior. I suggested volunteering for a campaign because it’s a chance for a possible econ kid to immerse in real life community or state issues, under adult guidance. And now. He would get an opportunity to absorb polling impact and positioning on issues, learn more about local economics, etc. Aligning with an organization beats trying to invent the wheel alone, with little background or prep.
Yes, he could find a professor. But why not activate now?
A rookie thinking he can go write up a survey and get a bump in admissions is very low. There are a few colleges that accept a research paper supp, but crafting one takes time. It’s not the norm for adcoms to take off their institutional hats and become academic reviewers. At best, it might go to a faculty member- but only if the rest of the app and supp passes muster, the whole is compelling enough to ask for faculty time.
@iwannabe_Brown Thanks for the commentary; your criticism is certainly meaningful. The spectrum of what rarity means is broad and I can see how my use of the word might have been ambiguous. And I admit that I got a bit carried away trying to convey a political message (about the plurality of scientific trajectories, etc) — to the point where it occulted the particulars of this question and what would best serve the OP.
As for Galois, I thought he was a good example because enough time has passed to seriously assess his work and its impact on the course of mathematics. And, well, he’s iconic. A name brand gets the point across a bit faster. I can think of a handful of kids today who have arXiv’d interesting single-author articles — D. Yang comes to mind, O’Dorney was another one a little while ago — but the problem there is that we don’t yet have the perspective to place their corpora in context. Without probing their influence and full mathematical wake, it’s hard to use them as a compelling Exhibit A (even if their work does seem quite good).
Hmm, maybe a better demonstrative choice would have been Saul Kripke, who developed modal semantics and completeness theorems at 17? He’s modern-ish (came of age in the ‘60s) and the dust has settled enough to realize his pioneering role in mathematical logic.
Anyway, it’s a bit of a moot point now that OP has a game plan Thanks, Brown, for the constructive discussion, and best of luck to you, @smilingalong!