<p>I am a 10th grader. I am not sure whether I should get some lab experience at NIH or volunteering at Red Cross Naval Medical Center. Has anybody done any volunteering for Red Cross. Which one sounds more impressive to the college admission officer? My dream school is Johns Hopkins or Georgetwon. So far I have 240 community serivce hours already. Please advise.</p>
<p>What will sound better will be the experience that has the most impact on your life and that you have the most impact on. In other words, how you take advantage of the opportunity that you pick will be of most importance to colleges, not which one you do.</p>
<p>If, for instance, your NIH experience consists of hundreds of hours of washing test tubes, that wouldn't be impressive. If, however, you go there and as a result of your assertiveness and obvious intelligence establish a relationship with a researcher and end up co-authoring a paper with that person, that would be very impressive.</p>
<p>Similarly, spending hundreds of hours answering the Red Cross phone: not impressive. Volunteering at the Red Cross, spotting a problem that they lack resources to address, and then your raising $ or attracting volunteers to address that problem -- that would be very impressive.</p>
<p>Thanks for your detailed advice. You got a very point. The problem is I have no idea what am I gonna be doing at either Red Cross or NIH. I love science so much. I am taking both honors bio and chem this year, like it so much.</p>
<p>I have a daughter who is a junior who loves science madly, also. She has done research locally in biochemistry over the last two summers and has learned a lot, made great contacts and the professor with whom she worked last year is going to mentor her to an Intel project. Obviously, winning is highly unlikely, but the research gives her something interesting to talk about at interviews and pointed her in the right direction to good questions to ask at colleges. Just an observation.</p>
<p>Cherry, talk to the Red Cross and to NIH to find out what you'd get to do. Also talk to people who have done those internships before, and see what opportunities they got and how they were able to expand their initial opportunities.</p>
<p>One of my goal is to work or volunteer at NIH lab and later on have one of those scientist be my mentor for entering Intel Science competition. I always wonder how did the kids come up with those great ideas for the Inter Science project, such as cancer research, DNA...etc. Have they ever worked at a lab and have someone helping them on the projects.</p>
<p>Just another anecdote: daughter attended the science open house at the school she hopes to attend, and the project they did involved the same type of genetic-computer-thingy (not a science person) and when the chair of the science department came around, daughter was able to chat knowledgeably and show him a few of the things she had done over the summer. He was tickled and kept in contact with her.
That said, you could do a lot of good with the Red Cross . . .</p>
<p>do you think it is better to go to NIH or....</p>
<p>a state public health research institute???
the work at the public health research institute seems like it would be better, and the head researcher said that he would prep me for the westinghouse/ siemens/ intel competitions.</p>
<p>Is the reputable name of NIH more important than doing better work at a less known research institute??? also is it possible to do westinghouse/ intel comptetions using NIH research??</p>