Should High School Students Do Academic Research?

A growing number of high school students are looking for opportunities to do academic research, hoping to add ‘published author’ to their list of achievements when they apply to colleges.

Just look on popular Facebook groups and Reddit threads for tips on getting into selective colleges, and you’ll likely find posts recommending that students participate in intensive research or compete in science competitions as a way to stand out on college applications. It seems that many aspiring applicants and their parents have fixed on the idea that getting research published in an academic journal as a high school student has arisen as a new trophy to strive for in an escalating race to try to stand out as an applicant, especially after more selective colleges have dropped requiring the SAT or other admissions tests.

But experts say that the trend of high school research, while well-intentioned, has plenty of pitfalls. After all, academic research often requires deeper knowledge of a field than is typical in high school, and it involves carefully following ethical guidelines to protect research subjects from potential harm that students may not be aware of without expert guidance.

“A piece of research, even a basic piece of research, can take years to produce,” says Bob Malkin, the executive director at the International Research Institutes of North Carolina. “High school students have classes they need to worry about. They may be playing sports. They might be pursuing other hobbies or interests. So mixing this in with all the other things they need to do can definitely be a bad idea, just because it takes so much time.”

Pushing students to get involved in research early can also amplify inequities among those who don’t have access to expensive research programs or opportunities at elite institutions. That’s because many students can’t afford to participate in summer programs to hone research skills, or they aren’t taught important research skills in high school, says Bethany Usher, the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Radford University. As a result, they don’t have the same experiences that will help them find a job in a lab or conduct their own project when they get to college freshman year, she says.

That’s not to say that teaching research skills in high school is bad, though. In fact, Malkin recently co-wrote a book about how to help young students along the path, called “A Guide to Academic Research for High School Students.”

The hope, experts say, is that teaching research skills becomes a more mainstream affair, making its way into high schools and undergraduate courses outside of elite private schools. That could help build basic skills without chasing publication at too young an age.

Building Skills

Bonnie Hale, an independent counselor advising high school students on their college applications, says that she sees students whose attempts to do research to enhance their resume does them more harm than good.

One student, for instance, asked Hale to help her send out a survey to parents across California, a task that would’ve required the oversight of an institutional review board.

Other students will try to submit their work for publication without the proper elements of an academic paper, such as a background literature review or a methods section. One student hoped to submit a paper that didn’t even include a research question, Hale says. No peer reviewed journal would publish this work, she adds.

Some journals cater toward research from high schoolers, but they often require high fees, are run by other high school or undergraduate students or aren’t reputable journals, Hale says. Plus, publishing in these journals likely won’t impress college admissions officials, she adds. For students looking to get research published, Malkin suggests they work with a college faculty member, though that can be difficult to pull off.

Publishing research without proper mentorship or oversight can also have major consequences for the student, says Hale, who co-wrote the book on student research with Malkin. She’s worked with some students who say they participated in a study, only for Hale to find out they overstated their role in the paper. If students get caught conducting research unethically or mis-representing themselves on an application, a college could rescind its offer or put that student on probation, she says.

“That’s what students don’t understand,” Hale says. “That the pressure makes them go in a direction that they ought not to go.”

To Hale and Malkin, improving the environment starts with changing parent attitudes. Parents need to lower the pressure and understand that their child will learn and be happy in college even if they don’t get into their dream school, Malkin says. If they’re interested in research, encourage them, but if they’re not, don’t force it, he says. “Somehow somebody’s got to convince these parents that your kid’s going to be okay,” he adds.

Usher, of Radford, says more high schools around the country should also help teach research skills — without pushing too hard too soon. She says high school teachers could encourage their students to participate in community-based projects, for example, such as surveys or other outreach in their local area. Often the skills young students learn through doing research, like critical thinking, are what help them later on rather than the research itself, she says.

“If we want to reach a greater majority of students, being able to have those teachers well-equipped to be taking advantage of research opportunities from communities and making them relevant to students” is essential, Usher says.

Early exposure to core research skills could also help with college readiness and retention, she adds. “Students may not have seen themselves as being interested in doing something like that, but if they’re taught inquiry and research opportunities in high schools, that doesn’t require a university to be nearby,” she adds.

Some colleges have also begun incorporating research skills into courses. Throughout a student’s time in college, classes will continue to build on those skills, which students can use when they enter the workforce or graduate school, says Lindsay Currie, executive officer for the Council on Undergraduate Research.

Most graduate programs now require some level of research, Malkin says, and students need to start as early as possible. Working research into classes encourages students to sign up for additional opportunities outside of the classroom once they build their confidence in the subject, Currie adds.

“If you just have a flyer that says, ‘hey, do you want to participate in my lab,’ you might not, as a college freshman, really understand what that means if you don’t have any context for it,” she says. These courses “make it so students understand the value and can test out whether it’s the right fit for them.”

In one biology class at Radford, students conducted research on a specific fungus among bees. After a semester of trapping bees and testing them using various methods, the students presented their original findings at a research fair. These types of projects can be conducted in any type of course, says Usher, who was the previous president of the Council on Undergraduate Research. She suggests that students could each choreograph their own routines in a dance class rather than just all learning the same steps.

“They don’t have to step out of their comfort zone, everybody’s going to class so there’s not a ‘you get selected for a thing’” type of process, Usher says. “Sometimes students do research and they don’t even know they’ve done it,” she adds “You need to be like, ‘this thing that you thought was really cool and exciting, that was research.’”