Many students understand that gaining research experience in high school will greatly strengthen your application materials. This experience can demonstrate your academic prowess to admissions officers, demonstrate your potential for the rigorous academic training at a top university, and convey that you are passionate about and accomplished in your chosen subject area.
However, the key question is, how to embark on the path of scientific research? Although many research opportunities are primarily open to college students, some summer programs, laboratories, and research facilities also welcome high school students. In order to help everyone better seize scientific research opportunities, Xiaohe will discuss three ways to accumulate scientific research experience in this article.
Scientific research projects
Many universities, government agencies, laboratories, or academic institutions have summer research and volunteer programs for high school students. These programs typically require applications to be submitted by January or February for programs that will begin in June of that year. Application materials typically include essays and letters of recommendation, which program administrators will use to match you with specific research faculty upon admission.
Some research projects for reference:
Pioneer Academics
Lumiere Research Program
Aspirnaut Summer Research Internships for High School Students
Boston University – Research in Science & Engineering (RISE)
Children's Hospital Colorado Child Health Research Internship
Garcia Scholars – Stony Brook University
Maine Space Grant Consortium Research Internships for Teachers and Students (MERITS)
Magee Women's Research Institute High School Summer Internship Program
National Institutes of Health – Summer Internship in Biomedical Research (SIP)
Naval Research Laboratory Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program
Research Science Institute
Simons Summer Research Program
Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program (SIMR)
University of California-Santa Barbara Research Mentorship Program
University of Chicago Research in the Biological Sciences (RIBS)
Join the research team
The easiest way for high school students to get involved in research is to join an existing research project. Every university school has laboratory facilities as all faculty members are required to conduct research and publish findings as part of their job responsibilities. This doesn't mean that every school will have a spot for high school students who want to participate in research, but college is a good place to start looking.
Once you have identified your area of interest, the next step is to find out what research is currently being conducted at institutions near you. Universities are a good place to start, as commercial labs can have a hard time finding places for students, although some labs have internship opportunities. Learn about ongoing research projects and the professors or graduate students leading them.
Once you find a project you want to be a part of or a professor you want to work with, you need to reach out to them. When you first start working in a lab or with a professor, you may find the work assigned to you boring and repetitive, very different from the excitement you expect to get from research. You need to know two things: First, if you stick with it, you'll likely end up doing more independent research, but no one will be in the lab directing the experiments in the first place. Second, almost all research requires long periods of boredom before (if you're lucky) you get interesting results.
To advance in these positions, you must learn everything you can. This takes two forms: first, learning the actual techniques used in research, that is, the physical methods scientists and professors use when conducting research. Second, learn what questions to ask and why. Research begins when you ask an interesting question and try to find an answer that no one has found before.
One last important note about academic research: academic research can often be very boring. Even the most exciting projects, such as conducting astronomy research in Antarctica, excavating long-lost cities in the Middle East, and excavating dinosaur bones in Outer Mongolia, are long hours of tedious, repetitive work. While there will be exciting discoveries, don't expect all research to be fast-paced and flashy. Good research takes time and the determination to do it well.
This is not to give you up on doing research; on the contrary, it can be one of the most valuable things you do. The key is to set your own expectations and be prepared.
independent research
It is much easier to conduct independent research in the sciences than in the social sciences or humanities (for example, conducting archaeological research alone is considered tomb robbing and is not allowed).
Doing your own research is difficult due to limited resources and sometimes limited knowledge. Still, you have a lot to contribute. You just need to scale the projects you take on based on the resources and knowledge you have; the more you learn, the more you will learn.
The end goal of most research is either to publish a paper or participate in some kind of scientific competition. While you can absolutely do research just for the fun of it, having your results reviewed and validated by others makes your results more credible and easier to measure. The science competitions you enter should reflect the size and scope of your research, as well as your field of research. Results that are less important or difficult to summarize may be better suited for publication, while engineering projects are often better suited for participation in science fairs or competitions.
If your goal is to publish a paper, it's easy to start with Negative Result Research. Repeating previously done experiments, strictly following experimental methods, and obtaining negative results is an important part of the scientific process. Negative results indicate that more research is needed on a topic and that the problem may not be as solved as previously thought.
However, due to grant priorities, most university labs will not devote many resources, if any, to redoing experiments to detect negative results. Therefore, it is a good choice for students who want to do independent research. Look for experiments done in the past few years, involving subjects that interest you, and with a setup that you can replicate at home. If you can't find the full text of an article, please contact the author; scientists love to discuss their work, and most will share the full text of the paper for free if you ask.
Be sure to thank anyone who contacts you for their time and effort, and if they seem particularly friendly, you should ask the original researcher if they have suggestions for your own attempts with negative results. While they may not necessarily be able or willing to take the time to help you, most scientists are happy to encourage others to get involved in their field.
If you do get negative results, or your experiments in other areas get negative results, you can submit them to the All Result Journal, which is dedicated to publishing negative results as well as positive results. Negative outcomes can add to the common knowledge base by illustrating what cannot be done, or at least cannot be done in a particular way. This prevents future researchers from wasting time by making the same mistake.
Conducting and publishing your own research can be daunting, but scientific discovery is open to everyone. Additionally, just because you're not working directly with scientists in the lab, that doesn't mean you don't have access to them. You should contact scientists and professors who have written papers similar to the problem you are researching, both for their advice and for networking opportunities. You can use the same email guide as you would for requesting an internship, but instead of asking for a lab, you're asking for advice, guidance, or just access to their papers.