Will doing research in high school help my child with selective admissions and/or merit aid?

Applying to College
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<p>What is the value, in college admissions terms, of doing research with a professor at a well-known university while in high school? My daughter, who is most interested in chemistry and biology, may have the opportunity to do this next year (12th grade), but does not want to even explore the possibility. She wants to take AP Psychology instead.</p>

<p>She is competitive for very selective colleges - 3.8-3.9 unweighted GPA, 2190 SAT (will re-take in October), SAT II's are 780 Math II, 740 Chemistry, 700 Biology. She has taken a large number of ungraded extracurricular science courses (high school through college level) at a very highly regarded university near our home; her other extracurriculars are Mock Trial and a religious studies program that completed last year.</p>

<p>My understanding is that research will have a very positive effect on her chances for admission and merit scholarships, much more so than AP Psych. However, she is adamantly against even exploring the possibility as she claims research is 'boring'. She doesn't have any non-school research activity, so I'm not sure how she would know.</p>

<p>She does have one or two friends who have done this or a similar program, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find out what it's like. My husband and I told her we're not going to force her to do anything she hates (actually, we've never forced her to do anything academic) but I don't understand the opposition to even exploring something she might like and that could be very helpful to her. Even though we've been very hands-off prior to this point, I feel like this may be something worth being pushy about.</p>

<p>Am I correct in understanding that research with a professor would be very helpful to her, and do you have any ideas about how to overcome her resistance to exploring the possibility?</p>

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<p>Doing research is a good EC. Having a publication from it may even make it a hook. The key thing is whether you can demonstrate a passion on it. Otherwise, those EC check list items have very little weight in admission, even much less if any for merit aid.</p>

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<p>“I don’t understand the opposition…” She is a teenager, right? Sometimes they just want to do it their own way.</p>

<p>In general, you are correct. (Shock to your teen) I don’t think research would replace competitive grades or test scores, but among those with great credentials, that would help differentiate her from the average applicant.</p>

<p>A letter or recommendation from the research professor would do well, too!</p>

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<p>I think research would help, but pushing her to do something she is strongly resisting could backfire. I letter from a professor about an enthusiastic student is a plus, but a letter about a reluctant and disinterested student might not be. </p>

<p>You could ask her to look into it- meet with some professors, see what they are doing, the leave the choice to her. If she absolutely doesn’t want to do it after looking into it- then let it be.</p>

<p>If she is enthusiastic about psychology- it is possible for her to do some research along this line?</p>

<p>Also, is your interest a school where she could get merit aid? Can you afford the cost of a selective private college? </p>

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<p>I hope you know highly selective colleges do not offer merit aid in general. Only financial need based aid. </p>

<p>Research might be helpful but is certainly no guarantee, IMHO not worth making your teenage D miserable if she’s really opposed to the idea. My D got a much coveted internship at a prestigious multinational, but hated every minute of it. It would have looked amazing on her resume but there was no way I could convince her to stick with it and I just had to accept that there was reason behind the choice even if I couldn’t understand it. She’s a smart girl, trust her instincts…</p>

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<p>I think there’s a good chance she’s enjoy the internship - her fellow students seemed to like theirs, and one student received a major award for his work. Since she wants to go into chemistry, it’s a good way to see what research in or after college would be like. It’s not a full-time thing - it’s 6-8 hours for a semester.</p>

<p>For some reason the AP Psychology bothers me. It’s not that it’s a ‘gut’ class - she’s also taking Sign Language, which will probably be of less use to her than psych., but it sounds like it could be a fun and interesting course. I’m not sure how good the AP Psych is (I’ll try to find out), but I know that in both colleges I went to, Introduction to Psychology was a large lecture course with an excellent and entertaining professor. Unless the AP course is really excellent, I’d rather have her save psych to be a ‘fun’ course in college (as I cross my fingers and hope that it actually is an enjoyable and entertaining class wherever she ends up)…</p>

<p>I thought as well that she might take a science or other course at a nearby university (there are a number of excellent universities near where we live, many offer extension courses or will allow high school students to take a class). But she might not even want to do that - she wants to be a ‘typical’ high school student, possibly (IMHO) because she felt somewhat out of the group during elementary and middle school. She wasn’t bullied or teased - she’s got good social skills and is a good athlete - but didn’t have the same interests as other students her age and felt somewhat isolated. Now that she’s in high school she has a peer group of equally talented friends, which is great, but she doesn’t want to do ANYTHING different than the standard high school curricula, which doesn’t make sense. (Her friend who got the award spent twenty-plus hours a week doing research for either a semester or year, with full credit from the school, and maintained friends and a social life).</p>

<p>She’s an extremely intelligent girl - received full financial aid from an organization to fly across the country and take accelerated college courses (real courses, not courses at a college) one summer in middle school. She definitely could have begun college at 10th grade if not earlier, but there wasn’t a program here to support a student her age (University of Washington and some other schools have support for very young students, unfortunately all of them were literally thousands of miles away).</p>

<p>So I guess part of it is feeling like she’s wasting her potential, which in fact to some extent she is. And then she gets down on herself and says she’ll “never” get into College X or College Y or College Z…which are reach schools for EVERYONE. She seems to have lost a lot of self-confidence academically, even though she’s getting all A’s, which is why I’d like to introduce her to something more challenging than what she’s been doing.</p>

<p>Financially, our EFC is all over the place depending on the college. A couple of colleges calculated it as $10k, several calculated it as around $24k, and a few thought we could pay the whole $50-60,000, which is a joke. I need to prepare a documented account of our situation to present to financial aid offices, hopefully that will help.</p>

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<p>You seem to keep pushing your High Schooler to be in college (doing research with a college professor, take college classes) and she is happy being a High Schooler. Maybe she knows she has plenty of time to do college academics in college. She isn’t wasting her potential…that would be if she didn’t go to college.
Maybe she knows that she has socially found a place where she fits in and wants the full high school experience. No need to skip that and move on to college.</p>

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<p>Your daughter is smart with good stats. She should be able to attend a good and affordable college even without the research experience as long as you and your daughter make the college list right. Nowadays more and more high school students have research experiences but it is the quality of research and the motivation of the individual student that count. Maybe you should focus on helping her choose the right colleges (academical, financial, and social fitness for her).</p>

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<p>Bopper, I don’t have a problem with her having the “full high school experience” - she said a couple of years ago that she didn’t want to go to college early and we said fine. In fact, we’ve never pushed her (except possibly now, to at least explore) - it’s been the opposite; we had to limit the number of classes she took on Saturdays, which got her very upset but led to a compromise (she wanted 6 hours of classes, she wanted 2, we compromised on four) and at one point deliberately delayed purchasing a math workbook she wanted in the hopes that she would get involved in something else (she asked every day for a couple of weeks so we bought her the book, by the end of the summer she had finished an entire year’s worth of math).</p>

<p>This is a child that went to classes every day of the week for years, except for the summer. We weren’t very happy about it, but realized that SHE was happier when we allowed to explore her interest in different areas. She’s kind of a different kid - we had to have her IQ tested for a program she wanted to get into and it extremely, extremely high, and she’s almost scarily smart - absorbs knowledge in large quantities, all at the same time, rather than piece by piece. She’s extremely self-motivated. but also needs social interaction, which is why we didn’t homeschool her (as the parents of many motivated students do) or push her academically.</p>

<p>The situation here is a decision between a single course and doing a research project; I feel the research project could give her the ‘edge’ that could make a difference in selective colleges or non-school-based scholarship. We have never asked her to do anything academic she didn’t want to - we’re very hands off as another aspect of ‘self-motivated’ is ‘stubborn’ - but we did tell her that there may be a point where we would want her to do something (relatively minor) for college purposes. This is that time; the issue is approaching it in a way that will be attractive to her.</p>

<p>To be honest, what I was hoping for (in addition to good advice) was a whole bunch of people saying ‘Yes, do the research, it could help you a lot’, so there would be adults other than her 'know-nothing[ parents saying that to her, which I think would in fact have some weight with her. Her counselor at school will not make recommendations, only discuss ‘options’, and besides it’s summer so she’s not around. A relative who started a college admissions consulting business is ‘helping’ but her attitude seems to be ‘let them do what they want, don’t push’. That’s my attitude also, EXCEPT for this one-time opportunity which I really would like her to take.</p>

<p>She’s turned down a lot of potential opportunities and ways to shine because she just didn’t want to do them -didn’t want to apply for summer programs, even short ones, even though I think she would have a shot at getting into either ‘prestigious’ programs where she’d learn a lot, or programs where she’d get a taste of real-world like (i.e. engineering). (Actually she eventually applied to a couple of programs she liked, but wasn’t chosen; I don’t think she worked very hard on the applications and wouldn’t let me see them afterwards). We let that go. She didn’t want to be on the school science team, which is now representing our state in the national finals, in favor of mock trial team, which is improving but hasn’t won anything - we didn’t say a thing.</p>

<p>But I feel that, unlike Mock Trial (learning thinking and presentation skills) and staying home for the summer (she’s taking a non-credit course at a college through a program she enjoyed last year, and working part-time), AP Psych, unless the teacher is really fantastic, isn’t going to add much to her life or her resume. She’s interested in psychology but not enough to do it as a career, at least at this point, so it’s not like she’s getting a jump on something she’s wanted to do all her life. It’s a class, that’s all. She’d like to take it, but it’s not going to effect her life negatively if she waits another year.</p>

<p>However, a research project truly could make that small difference to push her over the edge for the school or the scholarship. And we’re not even asking her to commit to it - just check it out. I don’t want it to be like the summer programs, where we did make her at least look at some information; I think the applications were probably done to ‘make me happy’ even though I told her that as long as she was making an informed choice, I was fine with her staying home. So I want her to go in with a truly open mind and discuss it. The question is how to approach the issue to have the best chance of success. I know this sounds like a psychological issue that isn’t appropriate for this column, as said before probably the most helpful thing would be the opinions of disinterested adults (she feels people she knows, especially relatives, have ‘hidden agendas’, which is actually true).</p>

<p>I’m probably making her sound like a nut case, which she’s not; I think it’s really just the flip side of her personality coming out. People describe her as ‘rational and self-controlled’ (good); the bad side of those traits, which could be named ‘secretive and stubborn’ are all magnified by adolescence, the stress of the college decision, and a need to separate from us. </p>

<p>I realize that what I wrote is very long, but I wanted to be honest and clear about what’s going on. I think one can delete comments here, so if people who truly feel that research would be a good option are willing to come out and say it, it would be something to add to our argument. She wouldn’t be impressed enough so that it would have a great influence on her decision, but she would take it into consideration. And as long as I feel I’ve done my best to point her in a direction I think would be very worthwhile, I’ll feel better about her choice, whatever it is.</p>

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<p>Of course research is a good thing…if the child is interested.
You have a viewpoint on what is “the best” for her (like all parents do), but that may not be what she wants.
Most Every parent would like their kid to take the most rigorous courses and go to a top school…but that may not be what every kid wants. My DD doesn’t want to apply to reach schools because the stress of trying to compete would be too much for her. So we found schools where she would be above the 75% and could get merit. Her goal is to go to Med School and the schools we have picked will prepare her.</p>

<p>You say “The question is how to approach the issue to have the best chance of success.” What defines success? Who defines success?</p>

<p>I think your real question is “Why doesn’t she want to advance academically as much as I want her to? Why doesn’t she want to do the absolute most she can academically?”</p>

<p>She is taking a course and working over the summer. Those are good things.</p>

<p>She actually sounds very balanced…she seems to like to learn, has had a job, and doesn’t want go to college 2 years early and be the youngest one around. If she was bored at high school, then it might make sense to go to college early. But if she is happy and is taking some extra science courses that shows she is intellectually curious, what is so bad about that?</p>

<p>And nobody can say “Do the research, it would for sure get you into Princeton” because nobody can know that.</p>

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<p>I can only tell you this, I have two kids at Ivy league universities , neither of them had any research experience but apart from the usual strong stats,good essays, good letters etc both had strong leadership roles in ECs at school. </p>

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<p>Bamboolong, you’re totally right about the importance of making up a good college list. The issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that she doesn’t want to apply to more than six schools (I think we could talk her out of that). Her reasoning is essentially that it’s inefficient and a waste of time, because you only need one school. I spoke with her about having choices, especially as we won’t be able to see a number of schools we’re considering. In addition, with selective schools (she’s got a few on her list), if you want to go to a selective school you do need to apply to more schools. The college counselors at our (public) high school said 10-12 applications are not unusual.</p>

<p>Neither of us feel that it’s necessary for her to go to a selective school, but depending on how the financial aspect works out it may be the best choice financially. Or it may not. As stated there are complicated personal and legal issues, and it’s very difficult to predict the results in advance.</p>

<p>She also has a number of ‘absolute’ requirements (which have changed over the past few months, so maybe they’ll change some more). She wants a certain size (3,000-10,000, unless she’s in an honors or similar program that will make the school seem smaller), business courses, weatherwise no colder than Massachusetts, not in the city but close enough to commute, and probably a few things I left out. Despite these ‘requirements’ she’ll make exceptions for schools she really likes for whatever reason.</p>

<p>We need to narrow down the list, but so far we have Scripps and Harvey Mudd in California, Rice (and possibly Dean’s Scholars program at U. Texas-Austin), Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory, Elon (academic safety school) honors at U. Maryland, U. Delaware, or U. North Carolina, Washington & Lee in Virginia, Skidmore, Wellesley, and possibly Smith/Mt. Holyoke. I think she’d like Haverford and Swarthmore, she visited and liked them but felt they were too far away from Philadelphia (I’m not sure if that makes sense, but whatever). Interestingly, even though she’s looking at a lot of women’s colleges, she says she doesn’t want to go to one; maybe a college like Scripps or Bryn Mawr which has many co-ed opportunities would work, although she likes Smith and Wellesley very much (hasn’t seen Mr. Holoyoke)…</p>

<p>Places where we’d like her to look at but she doesn’t, at least at the moment, are MIT (she’s wavering on that), Trinity College, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Davidson, Yale, Princeton, possibly Occidental. We looked at places in Pennsylvania (Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette); she liked them but I’m not sure enough to apply.</p>

<p>Her financial and academic safeties are U. of Alabama (there’s an automatic merit scholarship and they’re growing their honors program with very generous merit aid, plus she could finish in three years or less by using her AP and college credits) and our state flagship, which has an honors program although I’m not particularly impressed with it.</p>

<p>So there’s a lot of winnowing down to do. We’re planning a visit to N. Carolina in early fall and to western Mass.later in the summer There are a number of schools we’ll have to apply to without visiting; we’ll see where she gets in, what aid is possible, and go from there. </p>

<p>So there are about twenty schools on her list and another ten on ours (she’s said several times that she did want our opinions and would take them into account). How we’re going to get these down to six, or even 10-12, is another story. Time will tell…</p>

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<p>I think doing research is great if it comes from the student and he/she has the drive. My D will be applying to many of the same schools as your daughter, and she did not do research either. She had the opportunity at her school and turned it down. Most kids at our HS who do research get published in medical journals. She wants to do research in college, but feels strongly that she has more than enough going on in HS ( and she does). I did not push the issue because she shows very strong passion and drive in other areas and there are only so many hours in a day. If a school does not accept her because she turned down the research, so be it. </p>

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<p>

FWIW, Haverford is 25 minutes from Center City via SEPTA, which is less time than it will take to get from Wellesley to Boston.</p>

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<p>FWIW, Swarthmore is a twenty minute train ride to Philly and the station is at the college’s front gate.</p>

<p>It sounds like UA is the safety and she’s assured of admission, right? Have you visited? If she is perfectly happy to attend UA, then limiting her applications to six schools is fine. The big question is, as you pointed out, which six schools? </p>

<p>Your daughter sounds impressive. She’s obviously a top notch student who has already distinguished herself. She knows what she wants. She’s ambitious but she also wants to live in the present - there’s something to be said about enjoying one’s senior year in high school. </p>

<p>If you said your daughter had two choices, AP Psych and a research project, and she couldn’t decide which one to choose, I would have said the research project. But there its no choice; she wants to take AP Psych. I don’t think taking the class with her friends in high school instead of doing a research project will make or break any admission decision in her case. I could be wrong. </p>

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<p>Bopper, You’re right that I do feel rather disappointed that she hasn’t taken advantage of many of the opportunities available to her. For example, there is an Ivy League university near us that offers courses to the community for either credit or audit. The ones I’ve taken are fantastic, and obviously on a much higher level than any high school course including AP.</p>

<p>I would have loved for her to take or audit one of the courses I took because it would provide a contrast with a course she took over the summer at a state university, or indeed to take or audit ANY course, because they really are much more intellectualy challenging and make you think.</p>

<p>There was a ‘shadow your child’ for a half-day freshman year, and she was in a class with a truly excellent teacher. Despite this, my daughter looked bored out of her mind - tapping her foot, counting tiles, etc. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault, she had absorbed and understood the material and was ready to move on. The rest of the class wasn’t though, so she spent the hour re-learning material she had already learned. If it was just one class it wouldn’t be so bad - but I saw this in every class except music, which she has no experience in. That was the only class where she looked happy, because it was the only class where she was challenged and learned new things.</p>

<p>She’s said a number of times that she just wants to be a ‘typical teenager’. This would be fine except she’s NOT a ‘typical teenager’, she has a real gift which she is keeping inside herself because it makes her ‘different’. She has good social skills and friends, including non-academically oriented friends, but her need to fit in ‘exactly so’, IMHO, is preventing growth. None of her friends would mind or care (or even know) if she took a college course instead of a high school course, but even so she doesn’t want to do it. Her friend who won the award didn’t have that problem, and is doing all sorts of interesting things other than research. My daughter doesn’t even want to try.</p>

<p>I feel like she’s wasting her gifts in a way, at least now. She really has been given a tremendous talent in the form of intellect, and she’s not using it. The way she absorbs material does seem to be a ‘use it or lose it’ sort of thing, and I’m concerned being in classes that are too slow-paced for her will drop her sights and estimation of her own abilities to well below her capabilities.</p>

<p>In other words, I’m afraid her lowered performance and seemingly lessened ambitions are based on fear and lack of confidence rather than the desire to relax. Perhaps it’s a mix. But it really bothers me when she says ‘I’ll never be able to learn calculus over the summer’ (that’s just an example), or get into uber-selective College X. My response is that she can do pretty much whatever she wants in terms of academics - she may not want to get a PhD. in neuroscience, which is fine, but she needs to really own that this is a choice, that it’s her decision and it’s a fine one, rather than whining ‘I can’t do it’. As for selective colleges, she may get in or may not, my objection is her saying ‘I’ll never be able to get into College X’ because my record isn’t good enough. (She actually says this, which is ridiculous). (This is different from deciding that if your chances of admission are 10%, she might not want to take the time to fill out the application and instead concentrate on a great college where she has a better chance. That’s a strategic choice, not giving up).</p>

<p>I also feel somewhat guilty because other than courses and a short spell of tutoring, we haven’t been able to put her in an environment where she could really stretch her wings and not be held back. For a time we considered moving to Reno, Nevada where there is a very unique (public) school that allows students to move at their own pace; it’s located on a university campus and I think it would have been good for her. Health care concerns for me and her younger sister nixed that. She also won a 1/2 tuition scholarship to an excellent private school that emphasized students moving at their own pace (it may have been Montessori), unfortunately the other 1/2 of the tuition plus needing to purchase another car to get here there (it was not at all accessible by public transportation) made that impossible also. So I feel like she’s never really had the opportunity to fully use her gifts.</p>

<p>You’re right about balance, though. She tended as a child to be shy and anxious (within normal range but more so than most kids) and has overcome most of traits. So if a less selective school will help keep that balance (b/c of less pressure), that’s an advantage to be considered. I want her to be happy at school; my concern is though that in the long run she’ll miss having fulfilled her potential, and that it might leave a hold in her life.</p>

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<p>@dragonboatgirl also try posting in the Parents forum.</p>

<p>Soon your daughter will be in college where there is no "normal’ track so she will get that chance to spread her wings.</p>

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<p>@dragonboatgirl, your daughter will likely resent you if you force her to do research. She is clearly bright and very self-motivated, and if she has no internal motivation to do research on her own, she won’t get anything out of it. For what it’s worth, AP Psych was one of my favorite classes in high school. The intro psych class at my university was enormous, at 8 in the morning, incredibly boring, served as a weed out class for the major, and was not a “fun” class at all.</p>

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<p>My intro psych class in college was also surprisingly dull. I was expecting it to be an interesting class. I’m certainly quite interested in educational psych now, so I don’t think it was me. </p>

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<p>It seems to me that you are pressuring her to do this, for not entirely bad reasons. But truly, she is not going to ‘miss fulfilling her potential’ by not doing a research project in which she has no interest. You are clearly very proud of your daughter but it seems like a bit of pressure for her to live up to her IQ test. I would suggest the following: insist that she learn something about this–she may be intrigued. If, however, after doing this she remains adamant, then you are best bowing out. It’s a lesson, but not one that is going to define her life as you seem to fear. </p>

<p>My son, a rising senior, is doing a research project this summer, but it was initiated by him, in an area in which he has a very strong interest and personal commitment. He has, however, flat out refused to do any number of things that I have recommended for college admissions–I do understand your frustration. In my case I have realized it’s best to stay quiet, be supportive, and keep the lines of communication open. And in a way, I came to be rather proud of his insistence on being true to his interests instead of checking off boxes for a college resume. (Of course if his interests had been nothing but x-box that would have been a different story altogether). </p>

<p>Last, I considered whether it would have been to his benefit to enroll in college after his junior year. He doesn’t love high school and is anxious to get to college. But a number of things mitigated against it, including a tendency toward anxiety and migraines. So I go back and forth in wondering what schools are best for him. Like your daughter, he scores well on exams, does well in school. Initially I thought he should apply to 10-15 schools. But as we visited colleges it became increasingly clear to me that Reed, Chicago, Princeton and Haverford–all outstanding schools–are wonderful fits for him–but not necessarily Cornell, Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth or Stanford. I think he’ll apply to those four and possibly Bowdoin and our flagship state school.</p>

<p>With that said, a lot can change over the course of the summer. Good luck.</p>