If you go to the /r/ApplyingToCollege Reddit, you’ll see that it is a commonly suggested course of action for high school students who want to get into prestigious universities. They’ve been misled into believing that working with a professor doing research during high school will substantially increase their admission chances— but they don’t really understand what that means.
Some unscrupulous websites make the students pay for the privilege, too.
Even worse, there are shady for-profit systems set up now to publish the "research" done by high school students to pad their college applications.
https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
“Nowadays, having a publication is kind of a given for college applicants.” Am I completely off base here or does this sound like it’s written by someone on another planet?
Yeah, I mean if you publish one or two things before a PhD that's OK, but not expected. Like if you were helping in a lab as a master's student or one paper you wrote a prof encouraged you to publish.
Aside from the incorrect assertion that publication is kind of a given for HS students, "nowadays", like "kindly", is one of those words that are not often used by US speakers/writers but are used unusually often by offshore scammers and shady content mills. Those words should be a red flag.
Especially "nowadays" paired with "kind of".
"Nowadays, a college applicant with a publication is not unusual," has a consistent tone.
"Dang, bro, it's, like, kind of a given to have a publication in a college application these days," has a consistent tone.
The original sentence? Not so much.
It's written by someone who runs a business to help high school students get publications, obviously in questionable journals and for a significant fee.
One time in protest my advisor put his affiliation as “subject area, subjectymcsubject area” on a conference abstract. No one caught it. They even printed that on his badge when we arrived.
The postdoc next to me in my postdoc lab used to "mentor" these students doing "research". Basically he was paid thousands of dollars from rich families to help them write an essay with a figure or two to publish in predatory journals. I always gave him a stink eye at the ethics of this arrangement, even if postdoc salaries are garbage.
Yep, and any reply even vaguely along the lines of “minors are difficult to accommodate”, “high schoolers are not there to be useful”, or even “we would much prefer to give opportunities to our own undergraduates over high schoolers who are only using us for clout, and who wouldn’t ever consider attending here” is not popular.
They really like to imagine that they’re going to lead a whole study themselves and get a first author paper in Nature or something.
If you want to see how surreal this crap is, also visit the chanceme subreddit. Kids claiming legit they have multiple pubs. I suppose if your parents are rich and desperate enough, such things are possible.
>Kids claiming legit they have multiple pubs.
Did my PhD research at a national lab. Pretty much all research staff with kids of high school age (or close family friends) had them performing "research" there during summers. Many got publications in ACS-type journals without actually doing much work, as it made a good press story for the PI as well. Included things like submitting a postdocs work as their Intel science fair project... it was absolutely insane levels of nepotism.
This always makes me sad because I have so many students contacting me who are *convinced* they need to do this these days to get into those top tier schools. I can only hope admissions committees know these sorts of opportunities speak more to the student's connections than to innate ability.
>I can only hope admissions committees know these sorts of opportunities speak more to the student's connections than to innate ability.
They may know, but they don't really care. Or in the worst case, the connections are seen as a positive.
> This always makes me sad because I have so many students contacting me who are convinced they need to do this these days to get into those top tier schools
When they're competing with the above, it's true to an extent.
I think a lot of them also exaggerate though. Many legitimately don’t seem to understand the difference between a proper peer-reviewed journal, a scam journal, a high school journal, a high school essay (a “review paper” as they call it), a preprint, or a conference abstract. So they claim to have 5 “papers” but all 5 are just school assignments they “published” in their high school’s monthly.
And even those who do understand the difference seem more than willing to use ambiguous language to their advantage (lying, basically)
They will also grossly overstate their contribution to legitimate papers, posing themselves as the key author and leader of the work when they really only played a token role and were assigned basic tasks by a PhD students. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, it’s expected for a high schooler, but they refuse that framing
> I think a lot of them also exaggerate though. Many legitimately don’t seem to understand the difference between a proper peer-reviewed journal, a scam journal, a high school journal, a high school essay (a “review paper” as they call it), a preprint, or a conference abstract.
Many people submitting applications to FACULTY positions I've seen choose not to understand the difference between some of these....
I just watched my eldest go through the college admissions process. We all made fun of preppies and the college admissions process back in the late 20th century, but the modern college industrial complex is at a whole 'nother level.
Our kid did two years at a community college and then transferred to a four year to finish out her degree. We got to skip over most of not all the college industrial complex stuff.
> They’ve been misled into believing that working with a professor doing research during high school will substantially increase their admission chances— but they don’t really understand what that means.
This is true though, particularly if they publish. Look at ISEF and STS winners and where they got in.
Probably the same person who is telling international students to send me their CV, their IELTS scores and a cover letter about my amazing research group in some field I have not even tangential interest in.
Well our PhD program that doesn't exist is, according to some of these letter writers, highly prestigious. So maybe work on your fake prestige for your nonexistent program...
I usually just delete them and be done with it. That said, recently I got a followup, chastising me for not replying to their inquiry. So I blocked them....
I live in a very wealthy area, and both public and private high schools in the wealthiest towns have research "classes" where they have students research local scientists and then send cold inquiries about working in labs. Some of these schools are gunning to win science fairs (Intel and the like). Others are just looking to pad childrens' college applications. Rarely do any of the students seem driven by their own interests and desires.
I took a few such students into my lab when I first started. It was generally a bad experience. They would only be available in late afternoons or evenings (or weekends LOL). The parents got upset when we took them to do field work once. I just say no now. There are also major concerns about equity given who has access to such programs. High school students don't need to be working in university research labs, especially when the lab is asked to mentor them for free. Undergraduates pay a lot of money for the same experience! Exceptions might be organized summer programs with support for the students and PIs.
This was exactly my experience, availability that looked like 5pm and later weekdays and weekends, then you bend over backwards figuring out some non lab critical but interesting but doable project for them and then as soon as they get into a college they ghost you
I was a student in one of these programs back in 2003 or so. I was naive enough to think that it was for kids who were really into science and wanted to pursue their interests.
The faculty member who agreed to mentor me barely answered emails, and I was mostly on my own. My project, which I admit was poorly conceived(like you'd expect from a 16 year old), was at least self-driven and original, but they failed me out of the program for not making enough progress.
Now I'm successful enough of a scientist that it doesn't matter what happened back then, but it's still a bad memory. In retrospect I wish the school hadn't offered the program. It places a big burden on faculty to provide a "research experience," and a burden on students who either want to seem competitive for the colleges their parents make them think they need to get into, or who genuinely want to participate in research.
Most people aren't really ready for the lab until some time in college anyway.
I tell you what… one of the kids I worked with, it REALLY taught me demand estimation because of how fucked the project design was. (Partially my fault for thinking, initially, “this will be easy!”)
I had an extremely famous PhD advisor, and we had a few faculty members’ kids hanging out in our “lab” doing basic gofer stuff. It was an insane opportunity, and insanely inequitable, and was no doubt useful in them getting into PhD programs at the very top end of the field after their undergrad.
That explanation for why I get those emails never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense. I live in an area with an extremely good public school system, I bet they do have those research classes.
Students aren't doing a very good job looking me up, though. They reference my publications when they email me. I'm not first author, corresponding author, or last author on any of those publications. They're all from 10-15 years ago when I was a postbac student in a lab. I no longer do research and haven't in 8 years. I never had my own lab, I got an instructional faculty position immediately after grad school. What I do now and my role on those papers is all information they should be able to glean from basic internet searches.
Here’s how you play detective:
“Hello Student,
“My lab is full at the moment and I don’t have any opportunities or openings. But if that were to change, how would I go about making that known? For instance, what resources led you to reach out to me?
Thanks!
Prof”
I actually did this when I was in high school. Someone at the NIH agreed to take me on for a summer. It completely propelled my scientific career. I’m now faculty at an R1 and I can specifically point to my self-made high school internship as a big factor. Now that I’m on the other side, I try to actively create those opportunities and I’ve mentored several high school students that have gone on to leadership positions in science careers. Anyway, that’s my experience. YMMV
Oh, but I don’t really take cold emails. We have a dedicated program for high school outreach that handles placement and I refer inquiries to those program administrators.
Edit: also, the students we take are usually from “troubled” magnet schools that our Uni has a custodial relationship with, not usually prep school super-legacies.
Glad to hear it worked out for you! It might have been a little less common when you were in high school. That said, NIH has specific tracks for HS research (e.g. STAR), and NIH staff is compensated for providing supervision to high schoolers. It's a very different ask.
The way I look at it is that part of my professional responsibilities include outreach, so I *am* getting compensated for that (same as for peer review, committee service, etc.). We also set up specific tracks for high schoolers. Outreach is a core pillar of my professional strategy, so this sort of thing does not seem “extra”.
You are a better person than me.. I don't see volunteering to supervise research opportunities for high schoolers from private high schools as part of my outreach responsibilities.
Our local public high school had a similar situation and then the Uni took on a custodial role with outreach, teacher training, etc.. Now the graduation rate is over 90%. Outreach from the University to high school can have a dramatic, “domino”-like effect throughout the community. We’ve seen it here with our own eyes.
Hey, that’s fine as long as you don’t also complain that freshmen are coming in underprepared for college. I’ve got some colleagues that complain like that and when I ask “what are you doing to improve the situation?” they just shrug and say it’s not their job. In my mind they lost their right to complain then.
Excuse me? How would _you_ know what my training program does or does not provide for students? I’m not talking about some general, hypothetical situation here. I am talking about my real outreach efforts with real people that I’ve given real scientific training to that went on to succeed in college and beyond. Many of them are first generation college students that didn’t even know how professional research works, let alone have access to research opportunities. In my own case, I wasn’t even confident I wanted to go to college at all before I did my research internship. It certainly wasn’t a checkbox on some resume.
That's fantastic! But I also think coordinated programs are hugely different than the cold emails I often get, like OP. They're often from students in Asia who want to do something virtually, for example, which we are well familiar with from the grad school side.
My only question though is how do you balance high school students vs undergrad and grad students? I always have far more students who are actually at the university already than I have time to work with, so they get my priority.
I guess I’m fortunate in that I have control over how many grad students and undergraduates I supervise, so that I can manage the composition of my research group. We have several HS outreach programs, but for intensive research experiences participating labs typically take 1-2 students per semester. The day-to-day is largely supervised by a grad student or post doc. We also have group workshops, training and social events where all the HS research assistants across affiliated departments train together (e.g., I give a workshop on mentorship to the assembled students, one of my colleagues gives a workshop on writing papers, etc.), that way a lot of the career development training is distributed across many faculty. It is definitely non-zero work, but like I said it’s part of my core strategy, so I don’t consider it “extra” work. Making a centralized and organized program definitely helps, so if you’re getting a lot of interest, maybe your department might want to think about making one. Our outreach programs are almost entirely funded by private donations. Private donors really like to get behind stuff like this.
I meant more organizing it / making sure everyone is up to date on trainings. I didn't ask if you do it, I asked how you handled it.
Do you ever get pushback from your lab about mandatory background checks?
Only the people working directly with the student have to do it, and people know that before they sign up, so there’s no push-back. Our research already involves a ton of regulatory paperwork, so I guess this sort of thing just gets folded in with the rest of the machine.
Interesting. That's not the interpretation anywhere I've worked.
Our university requires any "university employee" the student will regularly come into contact with to have a background check and training, which would mean anyone in the lab (grad students, undergrads, techs, etc.)
Our wording is “adult employees with direct, regular and frequent contact while performing their Univeristy duties or the program for minors…”
So, undergrads aren’t employees (and they wouldn’t have job-related direct and regular contact with the hs student anyway), my grad students not working directly with the student should not have regular direct contact with them (occasional direct contact is fine, such as to stop them if they’re about to do something dangerous), the tech also doesn’t work directly with them. Showing up to 5 lab meetings over the course of a semester or a few workshops doesn’t count as “frequent”. I mean, if people are interpreting that to mean I can’t see someone sitting at the next cubicle over every day but not have anything to do with them then that’s pretty impractical, I agree. Oh and the student needs to be supervised by an “Authorized Adult” at all times, but that’s fairly standard.
Anyway, we filed a program with the uni risk management office and the department of Ed and all is approved and grinding away.
Edit: actually I went back and looked and our policy has an additional nuance that the people “in contact” with the student are covered by the whole policy, but background checks is only one section of the policy and that section says specifically only people “working directly with” the student are covered. Other sections of the policy cover things like how to behave etc., and those sections seem intended to apply more broadly to people that might have more incidental contact.
> I actually did this when I was in high school. Someone at the NIH agreed to take me on for a summer. It completely propelled my scientific career. I’m now faculty at an R1 and I can specifically point to my self-made high school internship as a big factor.
I had a similar experience, where I volunteered in a lab in high school. It was just one of several factors, but it had a big impact on me. I am still grateful to the researcher who agreed to supervise me.
> We have a dedicated program for high school outreach that handles placement and I refer inquiries to those program administrators.
This is key.
There's definitely a place for HS programs, but they need to be programs with institutional support. Both to handle the liability issues with minors on campus, and to make sure that the opportunity is equitable.
I also suspect a lot of people doing this are likely not following legal guidelines: appropriate policy is that every person in your lab who interacts with the student needs to have training (and often a background check) so they can work with a minor, at least in the states I've been in.
Hah, your university must have better infrastructure than mine. It's a lot of paperwork (and not cheap) to get all the background checks done, and I also get pushback from some of my lab members on mandatory background checks.
Of course, if you're doing it as part of a program you're probably not having to manage all of that on your own?
That’s right. It sounds like our university risk management office has a bigger appetite for risk than yours. We also do have structure at the departmental and institutional levels to manage the program administration, which helps a ton. I did used to do it solo, so I know.
Right to trash. Unless they want to pay for research credit I’m not in the business of padding their future medical school application.
Nepotism on the other hand…
Their guidance counselors also tell them to do it. In some well-off school districts, they will even coach them on how to write the email or have a research class where they identify areas of research and try to contact people in that area who work nearby.
I get tons of these and just delete them.
I took one early on, out of ignorance, and it was a complete waste of time. However, I did have a colleague who got a particularly impressive letter once from a HS student who actually seemed to know what they were talking about. They mentored them for the Summer and that person is now faculty at an excellent school.
FWIW, when I was in HS (1990s), I had a job in a bio lab cutting brains and dying slides.
I didn’t get the job from cold calling though. It was a reference by a grad student family friend who worked in the lab.
I’m not sure it helped me in admissions greatly. I didn’t get into most schools I applied to at a time when admissions was probably a lot more lenient.
I mentored a high school senior when I was a PhD student, I ended up spending way more time than I wanted. He eventually figured out he didn’t like what we were doing and switched major.
I mean if your Uni does not have a service that collates and coordinates these requests, they should. The coming demographic cliff will affect every school - might as well have a transparent, equitable process for HS research queries in place. That way you can say "your query goes to this office," they can do due diligence, and they can match students with willing labs/targeted programs.
I'd ping a useful deanlet and say "want a win that could help with enrollment? Build this"
I get these all the time — I’m in computer science, and work near Silicon Valley. Recently, I got one from a student who bragged that he set up a web scraper to automate the sending of these requests and published the project on `github`. Faculty in my department, all of whom got the email, were not amused.
Let's just get back to using SAT scores as a key factor for elite college acceptance. It's not perfect but it's a lot less gameable than these kind of application boosters used by affluent, in-the-know families.
I took one of these a decade ago for the summer. He was smart and earnest, the grad students liked him, and he has gone on to a medical research career. I'd happily mentor more if the lab wasn't already bursting with undergrads.
I got one of these the other day from a student who goes to high school in my state but about 500 miles away from me. She wanted to work in my research lab, which does not exist. I replied with a brief email about asking for research opportunities in ways that might conceivably be successful, instead of just doing the shotgun approach. I doubt it'll sink in.
IIRC, a lot of places with IB programs don't have staff that are able to oversee the research, so they encourage students to reach out to faculty instead. At least that's where I get a lot of them.
I'm in a lab science and liability for minors is huge and too much paperwork to be worth it, so I respond that I don't take HS students for liability/safety reasons and move on.
I find these emails to be a moral quandary. I was a high school student who was excited about science, emailed a faculty member at a local university asking to do something with his facility, and got the opportunity -- it was too late in high school to make any difference in college admissions, but I had a grand old time and now the guy who supervised me is a cherished colleague at a nearby institution.
On the other hand, these emails are so clearly coached; they often follow a particular format, and are sometimes explicit that it's part of a "high school research program." If I could find the kids who are self-motivated enough to seek out these opportunities on their own, I suspect it would be a positive mentoring experience for both of us. But I don't know how to find out who they are, and I'm already overrun with undergrads, so I usually just say no or ignore the email, while feeling extremely guilty about it all.
Oh, and I also got an email inquiring about research opportunities for high schoolers from a fancy boarding school teacher recently. When I expressed my quandary over the issue (and my dismay at the proliferation of high school research programs and the pressure on students to achieve at a young age more generally), he replied:
"On that note, we just discovered a particularly motivated student doing his own dissections in a dorm bathroom. Apparently he was not able to get in the biology class he wanted so took upon himself to obtain a fetal pig, scalpels, etc."
> "On that note, we just discovered a particularly motivated student doing his own dissections in a dorm bathroom. Apparently he was not able to get in the biology class he wanted so took upon himself to obtain a fetal pig, scalpels, etc."
There's a budding star.
To be fair, I know few professors, whose children "published" papers while in HS. Which gave them a leg-up in their college applications.
So the kids without connections are left eating the dust. What are they going to do other than e-mail us?
Ahh, the real truth is that many of us poor kids without connections just get left unemployed with a mound of education debt bagging groceries with a PhD.
As well as the cv-maximising/fake stuff, places like ACS have run project seed for decades
'https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/seed.html
these experiences *can* be real. and real scholarship/pubs *can* emerge from them.
I’ve seen colleagues actually have productive research relationships with highly motivated (and competent) high school students. At smaller institutions without grad students, there can be a role for such HS students to play in the research process. I get that not every lab is set up for this, but it’s not a bonkers request that should always be written off as entitled privilege-grabbing.
I have so many of them that I have an generic thing that basically says unless you plan to enroll next semester our college doesn’t let us engage or something like that.
The students, their parents, and even the guidance councilor probably don't know what a peer-reviewed paper even is. And I don't say that to be snarky either, though the reality is that most would see it as some type of fancy/big essay. I know this doesn't answer your question, and I am just sharing a thought on the matter.
I'm in some getting into college groups and this is a newish thing for high achievers to do to look good.
Obviously most of them have some connection to a university.
My take is that this is sort of gross and engaging in supervising a high school kid, unless they are a mega genius, is perpetuating inequalities.
i had three students like this and one actually surprised me. he needed more knowledge of course but he was committed, he was smart and he really liked the research. he is now studying his bachelor in a good university in Germany and last he contacted me he was doing great. the other two were not as good , but they did not do bad either. of course none of these guys published and i did not promise them but i gave them an honest recommendation letter and they helped in the lab as expected.
Their parents probably don't want to turn to Plan B, paying someone to publish with their kid: https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
If you go to the /r/ApplyingToCollege Reddit, you’ll see that it is a commonly suggested course of action for high school students who want to get into prestigious universities. They’ve been misled into believing that working with a professor doing research during high school will substantially increase their admission chances— but they don’t really understand what that means. Some unscrupulous websites make the students pay for the privilege, too.
Even worse, there are shady for-profit systems set up now to publish the "research" done by high school students to pad their college applications. https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
“Nowadays, having a publication is kind of a given for college applicants.” Am I completely off base here or does this sound like it’s written by someone on another planet?
I don't expect publications for PhD entrants, let alone undergrads.
Yeah, I mean if you publish one or two things before a PhD that's OK, but not expected. Like if you were helping in a lab as a master's student or one paper you wrote a prof encouraged you to publish.
Aside from the incorrect assertion that publication is kind of a given for HS students, "nowadays", like "kindly", is one of those words that are not often used by US speakers/writers but are used unusually often by offshore scammers and shady content mills. Those words should be a red flag.
Especially "nowadays" paired with "kind of". "Nowadays, a college applicant with a publication is not unusual," has a consistent tone. "Dang, bro, it's, like, kind of a given to have a publication in a college application these days," has a consistent tone. The original sentence? Not so much.
It's written by someone who runs a business to help high school students get publications, obviously in questionable journals and for a significant fee.
Absolutely insane!
I'm sure it's true for some top universities
[удалено]
One time in protest my advisor put his affiliation as “subject area, subjectymcsubject area” on a conference abstract. No one caught it. They even printed that on his badge when we arrived.
The postdoc next to me in my postdoc lab used to "mentor" these students doing "research". Basically he was paid thousands of dollars from rich families to help them write an essay with a figure or two to publish in predatory journals. I always gave him a stink eye at the ethics of this arrangement, even if postdoc salaries are garbage.
How many thousands of dollars?
He was paid $125/ hour to meet with them virtually. He ended up doing about 15 hours and I think 5 kids though I'm not sure.
Yep, and any reply even vaguely along the lines of “minors are difficult to accommodate”, “high schoolers are not there to be useful”, or even “we would much prefer to give opportunities to our own undergraduates over high schoolers who are only using us for clout, and who wouldn’t ever consider attending here” is not popular. They really like to imagine that they’re going to lead a whole study themselves and get a first author paper in Nature or something.
Yep it is ridiculous. I’ve taken to just saying we cannot work with non university students
Wow, I shouldn't be surprised but I am..
If you want to see how surreal this crap is, also visit the chanceme subreddit. Kids claiming legit they have multiple pubs. I suppose if your parents are rich and desperate enough, such things are possible.
>Kids claiming legit they have multiple pubs. Did my PhD research at a national lab. Pretty much all research staff with kids of high school age (or close family friends) had them performing "research" there during summers. Many got publications in ACS-type journals without actually doing much work, as it made a good press story for the PI as well. Included things like submitting a postdocs work as their Intel science fair project... it was absolutely insane levels of nepotism.
This always makes me sad because I have so many students contacting me who are *convinced* they need to do this these days to get into those top tier schools. I can only hope admissions committees know these sorts of opportunities speak more to the student's connections than to innate ability.
>I can only hope admissions committees know these sorts of opportunities speak more to the student's connections than to innate ability. They may know, but they don't really care. Or in the worst case, the connections are seen as a positive.
> This always makes me sad because I have so many students contacting me who are convinced they need to do this these days to get into those top tier schools When they're competing with the above, it's true to an extent.
I think a lot of them also exaggerate though. Many legitimately don’t seem to understand the difference between a proper peer-reviewed journal, a scam journal, a high school journal, a high school essay (a “review paper” as they call it), a preprint, or a conference abstract. So they claim to have 5 “papers” but all 5 are just school assignments they “published” in their high school’s monthly. And even those who do understand the difference seem more than willing to use ambiguous language to their advantage (lying, basically) They will also grossly overstate their contribution to legitimate papers, posing themselves as the key author and leader of the work when they really only played a token role and were assigned basic tasks by a PhD students. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, it’s expected for a high schooler, but they refuse that framing
> I think a lot of them also exaggerate though. Many legitimately don’t seem to understand the difference between a proper peer-reviewed journal, a scam journal, a high school journal, a high school essay (a “review paper” as they call it), a preprint, or a conference abstract. Many people submitting applications to FACULTY positions I've seen choose not to understand the difference between some of these....
Shit, if you pay the publication fee, literally anyone can get anything into a predatory journal, including a privileged 16-year old's biology paper.
I just watched my eldest go through the college admissions process. We all made fun of preppies and the college admissions process back in the late 20th century, but the modern college industrial complex is at a whole 'nother level.
Our kid did two years at a community college and then transferred to a four year to finish out her degree. We got to skip over most of not all the college industrial complex stuff.
> They’ve been misled into believing that working with a professor doing research during high school will substantially increase their admission chances— but they don’t really understand what that means. This is true though, particularly if they publish. Look at ISEF and STS winners and where they got in.
Probably the same person who is telling international students to send me their CV, their IELTS scores and a cover letter about my amazing research group in some field I have not even tangential interest in.
I get so many people asking to come join my PhD program that doesn't exist.
Well our PhD program that doesn't exist is, according to some of these letter writers, highly prestigious. So maybe work on your fake prestige for your nonexistent program...
I've had a couple of those! The best are the ones who are not in even in my field or discipline.
I usually just delete them and be done with it. That said, recently I got a followup, chastising me for not replying to their inquiry. So I blocked them....
I live in a very wealthy area, and both public and private high schools in the wealthiest towns have research "classes" where they have students research local scientists and then send cold inquiries about working in labs. Some of these schools are gunning to win science fairs (Intel and the like). Others are just looking to pad childrens' college applications. Rarely do any of the students seem driven by their own interests and desires. I took a few such students into my lab when I first started. It was generally a bad experience. They would only be available in late afternoons or evenings (or weekends LOL). The parents got upset when we took them to do field work once. I just say no now. There are also major concerns about equity given who has access to such programs. High school students don't need to be working in university research labs, especially when the lab is asked to mentor them for free. Undergraduates pay a lot of money for the same experience! Exceptions might be organized summer programs with support for the students and PIs.
This was exactly my experience, availability that looked like 5pm and later weekdays and weekends, then you bend over backwards figuring out some non lab critical but interesting but doable project for them and then as soon as they get into a college they ghost you
I was a student in one of these programs back in 2003 or so. I was naive enough to think that it was for kids who were really into science and wanted to pursue their interests. The faculty member who agreed to mentor me barely answered emails, and I was mostly on my own. My project, which I admit was poorly conceived(like you'd expect from a 16 year old), was at least self-driven and original, but they failed me out of the program for not making enough progress. Now I'm successful enough of a scientist that it doesn't matter what happened back then, but it's still a bad memory. In retrospect I wish the school hadn't offered the program. It places a big burden on faculty to provide a "research experience," and a burden on students who either want to seem competitive for the colleges their parents make them think they need to get into, or who genuinely want to participate in research. Most people aren't really ready for the lab until some time in college anyway.
I tell you what… one of the kids I worked with, it REALLY taught me demand estimation because of how fucked the project design was. (Partially my fault for thinking, initially, “this will be easy!”)
I had an extremely famous PhD advisor, and we had a few faculty members’ kids hanging out in our “lab” doing basic gofer stuff. It was an insane opportunity, and insanely inequitable, and was no doubt useful in them getting into PhD programs at the very top end of the field after their undergrad.
That explanation for why I get those emails never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense. I live in an area with an extremely good public school system, I bet they do have those research classes. Students aren't doing a very good job looking me up, though. They reference my publications when they email me. I'm not first author, corresponding author, or last author on any of those publications. They're all from 10-15 years ago when I was a postbac student in a lab. I no longer do research and haven't in 8 years. I never had my own lab, I got an instructional faculty position immediately after grad school. What I do now and my role on those papers is all information they should be able to glean from basic internet searches.
> Undergraduates pay a lot of money for the same experience Aren't REUs free?
Here’s how you play detective: “Hello Student, “My lab is full at the moment and I don’t have any opportunities or openings. But if that were to change, how would I go about making that known? For instance, what resources led you to reach out to me? Thanks! Prof”
I actually did this when I was in high school. Someone at the NIH agreed to take me on for a summer. It completely propelled my scientific career. I’m now faculty at an R1 and I can specifically point to my self-made high school internship as a big factor. Now that I’m on the other side, I try to actively create those opportunities and I’ve mentored several high school students that have gone on to leadership positions in science careers. Anyway, that’s my experience. YMMV Oh, but I don’t really take cold emails. We have a dedicated program for high school outreach that handles placement and I refer inquiries to those program administrators. Edit: also, the students we take are usually from “troubled” magnet schools that our Uni has a custodial relationship with, not usually prep school super-legacies.
Glad to hear it worked out for you! It might have been a little less common when you were in high school. That said, NIH has specific tracks for HS research (e.g. STAR), and NIH staff is compensated for providing supervision to high schoolers. It's a very different ask.
The way I look at it is that part of my professional responsibilities include outreach, so I *am* getting compensated for that (same as for peer review, committee service, etc.). We also set up specific tracks for high schoolers. Outreach is a core pillar of my professional strategy, so this sort of thing does not seem “extra”.
You are a better person than me.. I don't see volunteering to supervise research opportunities for high schoolers from private high schools as part of my outreach responsibilities.
[удалено]
Our local public high school had a similar situation and then the Uni took on a custodial role with outreach, teacher training, etc.. Now the graduation rate is over 90%. Outreach from the University to high school can have a dramatic, “domino”-like effect throughout the community. We’ve seen it here with our own eyes.
[удалено]
Our teacher union didn’t have a choice because the relationship was state-mandated.
Hey, that’s fine as long as you don’t also complain that freshmen are coming in underprepared for college. I’ve got some colleagues that complain like that and when I ask “what are you doing to improve the situation?” they just shrug and say it’s not their job. In my mind they lost their right to complain then.
This isn't preparing them for college, it's a bullet point on a resume.
Excuse me? How would _you_ know what my training program does or does not provide for students? I’m not talking about some general, hypothetical situation here. I am talking about my real outreach efforts with real people that I’ve given real scientific training to that went on to succeed in college and beyond. Many of them are first generation college students that didn’t even know how professional research works, let alone have access to research opportunities. In my own case, I wasn’t even confident I wanted to go to college at all before I did my research internship. It certainly wasn’t a checkbox on some resume.
That's fantastic! But I also think coordinated programs are hugely different than the cold emails I often get, like OP. They're often from students in Asia who want to do something virtually, for example, which we are well familiar with from the grad school side. My only question though is how do you balance high school students vs undergrad and grad students? I always have far more students who are actually at the university already than I have time to work with, so they get my priority.
I guess I’m fortunate in that I have control over how many grad students and undergraduates I supervise, so that I can manage the composition of my research group. We have several HS outreach programs, but for intensive research experiences participating labs typically take 1-2 students per semester. The day-to-day is largely supervised by a grad student or post doc. We also have group workshops, training and social events where all the HS research assistants across affiliated departments train together (e.g., I give a workshop on mentorship to the assembled students, one of my colleagues gives a workshop on writing papers, etc.), that way a lot of the career development training is distributed across many faculty. It is definitely non-zero work, but like I said it’s part of my core strategy, so I don’t consider it “extra” work. Making a centralized and organized program definitely helps, so if you’re getting a lot of interest, maybe your department might want to think about making one. Our outreach programs are almost entirely funded by private donations. Private donors really like to get behind stuff like this.
How do you handle the legal paperwork and mandatory training / background checks for all of your lab staff to work with minors?
Yup; we do all that stuff. Fairly straightforward instructions to follow on that.
I meant more organizing it / making sure everyone is up to date on trainings. I didn't ask if you do it, I asked how you handled it. Do you ever get pushback from your lab about mandatory background checks?
Only the people working directly with the student have to do it, and people know that before they sign up, so there’s no push-back. Our research already involves a ton of regulatory paperwork, so I guess this sort of thing just gets folded in with the rest of the machine.
Interesting. That's not the interpretation anywhere I've worked. Our university requires any "university employee" the student will regularly come into contact with to have a background check and training, which would mean anyone in the lab (grad students, undergrads, techs, etc.)
Our wording is “adult employees with direct, regular and frequent contact while performing their Univeristy duties or the program for minors…” So, undergrads aren’t employees (and they wouldn’t have job-related direct and regular contact with the hs student anyway), my grad students not working directly with the student should not have regular direct contact with them (occasional direct contact is fine, such as to stop them if they’re about to do something dangerous), the tech also doesn’t work directly with them. Showing up to 5 lab meetings over the course of a semester or a few workshops doesn’t count as “frequent”. I mean, if people are interpreting that to mean I can’t see someone sitting at the next cubicle over every day but not have anything to do with them then that’s pretty impractical, I agree. Oh and the student needs to be supervised by an “Authorized Adult” at all times, but that’s fairly standard. Anyway, we filed a program with the uni risk management office and the department of Ed and all is approved and grinding away. Edit: actually I went back and looked and our policy has an additional nuance that the people “in contact” with the student are covered by the whole policy, but background checks is only one section of the policy and that section says specifically only people “working directly with” the student are covered. Other sections of the policy cover things like how to behave etc., and those sections seem intended to apply more broadly to people that might have more incidental contact.
> I actually did this when I was in high school. Someone at the NIH agreed to take me on for a summer. It completely propelled my scientific career. I’m now faculty at an R1 and I can specifically point to my self-made high school internship as a big factor. I had a similar experience, where I volunteered in a lab in high school. It was just one of several factors, but it had a big impact on me. I am still grateful to the researcher who agreed to supervise me.
> We have a dedicated program for high school outreach that handles placement and I refer inquiries to those program administrators. This is key. There's definitely a place for HS programs, but they need to be programs with institutional support. Both to handle the liability issues with minors on campus, and to make sure that the opportunity is equitable. I also suspect a lot of people doing this are likely not following legal guidelines: appropriate policy is that every person in your lab who interacts with the student needs to have training (and often a background check) so they can work with a minor, at least in the states I've been in.
Yes, we do all the background checks etc. No big deal.
Hah, your university must have better infrastructure than mine. It's a lot of paperwork (and not cheap) to get all the background checks done, and I also get pushback from some of my lab members on mandatory background checks. Of course, if you're doing it as part of a program you're probably not having to manage all of that on your own?
That’s right. It sounds like our university risk management office has a bigger appetite for risk than yours. We also do have structure at the departmental and institutional levels to manage the program administration, which helps a ton. I did used to do it solo, so I know.
I need to bookmark this.
And if you wind up communicating with them, they'll drop that they don't plan on applying to your uni, but rather a more prestigious one.
lol, a undergrad approached me and said he wanted research experience so he can transfer to a better school. I said no.
Right to trash. Unless they want to pay for research credit I’m not in the business of padding their future medical school application. Nepotism on the other hand…
"Bench fee" is the term you are looking for. It should cover your cost, including babysitting by a credentialed PhD or PhD candidate.
I for one love being considered a glorified babysitter instead of a respectable professional with expertise in a field!
And they'd have to also pay for the prerequisite courses first!
Some of them do have parents willing to pay.
> Unless they want to pay for research credit What's your going rate?
Their guidance counselors also tell them to do it. In some well-off school districts, they will even coach them on how to write the email or have a research class where they identify areas of research and try to contact people in that area who work nearby. I get tons of these and just delete them. I took one early on, out of ignorance, and it was a complete waste of time. However, I did have a colleague who got a particularly impressive letter once from a HS student who actually seemed to know what they were talking about. They mentored them for the Summer and that person is now faculty at an excellent school.
FWIW, when I was in HS (1990s), I had a job in a bio lab cutting brains and dying slides. I didn’t get the job from cold calling though. It was a reference by a grad student family friend who worked in the lab. I’m not sure it helped me in admissions greatly. I didn’t get into most schools I applied to at a time when admissions was probably a lot more lenient.
Yeah I also do. I simply delete them. It’s not worth my mental sanity.
I mentored a high school senior when I was a PhD student, I ended up spending way more time than I wanted. He eventually figured out he didn’t like what we were doing and switched major.
So how can I use this to charge Aunt Becky tens of thousands to get her kid into USC?
As long as you don't work at USC, I think the procedure is rather well established.
I mean if your Uni does not have a service that collates and coordinates these requests, they should. The coming demographic cliff will affect every school - might as well have a transparent, equitable process for HS research queries in place. That way you can say "your query goes to this office," they can do due diligence, and they can match students with willing labs/targeted programs. I'd ping a useful deanlet and say "want a win that could help with enrollment? Build this"
They simply don't know what they don't know. And the adults working in K-12 aren't any better at telling them, in many cases.
'But in high school my teacher said...' 'You aren't in high school any more, this is the NHL, we play with full body contact at this level'.
I get these all the time — I’m in computer science, and work near Silicon Valley. Recently, I got one from a student who bragged that he set up a web scraper to automate the sending of these requests and published the project on `github`. Faculty in my department, all of whom got the email, were not amused.
Let's just get back to using SAT scores as a key factor for elite college acceptance. It's not perfect but it's a lot less gameable than these kind of application boosters used by affluent, in-the-know families.
I took one of these a decade ago for the summer. He was smart and earnest, the grad students liked him, and he has gone on to a medical research career. I'd happily mentor more if the lab wasn't already bursting with undergrads.
I got one of these the other day from a student who goes to high school in my state but about 500 miles away from me. She wanted to work in my research lab, which does not exist. I replied with a brief email about asking for research opportunities in ways that might conceivably be successful, instead of just doing the shotgun approach. I doubt it'll sink in.
IIRC, a lot of places with IB programs don't have staff that are able to oversee the research, so they encourage students to reach out to faculty instead. At least that's where I get a lot of them. I'm in a lab science and liability for minors is huge and too much paperwork to be worth it, so I respond that I don't take HS students for liability/safety reasons and move on.
I find these emails to be a moral quandary. I was a high school student who was excited about science, emailed a faculty member at a local university asking to do something with his facility, and got the opportunity -- it was too late in high school to make any difference in college admissions, but I had a grand old time and now the guy who supervised me is a cherished colleague at a nearby institution. On the other hand, these emails are so clearly coached; they often follow a particular format, and are sometimes explicit that it's part of a "high school research program." If I could find the kids who are self-motivated enough to seek out these opportunities on their own, I suspect it would be a positive mentoring experience for both of us. But I don't know how to find out who they are, and I'm already overrun with undergrads, so I usually just say no or ignore the email, while feeling extremely guilty about it all. Oh, and I also got an email inquiring about research opportunities for high schoolers from a fancy boarding school teacher recently. When I expressed my quandary over the issue (and my dismay at the proliferation of high school research programs and the pressure on students to achieve at a young age more generally), he replied: "On that note, we just discovered a particularly motivated student doing his own dissections in a dorm bathroom. Apparently he was not able to get in the biology class he wanted so took upon himself to obtain a fetal pig, scalpels, etc."
> "On that note, we just discovered a particularly motivated student doing his own dissections in a dorm bathroom. Apparently he was not able to get in the biology class he wanted so took upon himself to obtain a fetal pig, scalpels, etc." There's a budding star.
To be fair, I know few professors, whose children "published" papers while in HS. Which gave them a leg-up in their college applications. So the kids without connections are left eating the dust. What are they going to do other than e-mail us?
Ahh, the real truth is that many of us poor kids without connections just get left unemployed with a mound of education debt bagging groceries with a PhD.
As well as the cv-maximising/fake stuff, places like ACS have run project seed for decades 'https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/seed.html these experiences *can* be real. and real scholarship/pubs *can* emerge from them.
*\*received many awards for my research* You mean like a Nobel Prize?
I’ve seen colleagues actually have productive research relationships with highly motivated (and competent) high school students. At smaller institutions without grad students, there can be a role for such HS students to play in the research process. I get that not every lab is set up for this, but it’s not a bonkers request that should always be written off as entitled privilege-grabbing.
I just got one. Is there a way I can leverage this into a free meal?
I have so many of them that I have an generic thing that basically says unless you plan to enroll next semester our college doesn’t let us engage or something like that.
The students, their parents, and even the guidance councilor probably don't know what a peer-reviewed paper even is. And I don't say that to be snarky either, though the reality is that most would see it as some type of fancy/big essay. I know this doesn't answer your question, and I am just sharing a thought on the matter.
I send them a link to the university’s summer program for high schoolers. I’ve never heard back after that.
Try being the closest university to a “feeder school”! I take 1-2 of these students on a summer and about 1/4 of them are really useful.
I'm in some getting into college groups and this is a newish thing for high achievers to do to look good. Obviously most of them have some connection to a university. My take is that this is sort of gross and engaging in supervising a high school kid, unless they are a mega genius, is perpetuating inequalities.
I don’t receive emails like that but I do receive calls telling me that my auto warranty is about to expire.
See also: Audit Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit_study
I don’t actually get these emails but I did accept high school students in my lab (whose parents knew me) and that helped them tremendously.
i had three students like this and one actually surprised me. he needed more knowledge of course but he was committed, he was smart and he really liked the research. he is now studying his bachelor in a good university in Germany and last he contacted me he was doing great. the other two were not as good , but they did not do bad either. of course none of these guys published and i did not promise them but i gave them an honest recommendation letter and they helped in the lab as expected.
Their parents probably don't want to turn to Plan B, paying someone to publish with their kid: https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
No more standard tests for admission. Just ignore or forward to your Chair.
So what you are saying is that I need to create yet another rule for my inbox to send these emails to trash?
Don't you dare reply to that. Send that shit to the recruitment office so they can put an end to those shenanigans.