Target Audience: 7-8th graders, Good 9th graders, Advanced 10/11th graders

Let's talk about undergraduate research, and how to get them as a high schooler. The following steps is what I would recommend.

1. Git Gud.

Unless you have parents that can refer you to their coworkers, you are going to have to rely on cold emailing. And there is no other way to get people to respond to these except by being good. By being good, I mean more than getting an A in a class they teach; You need to stand out. You need to be able to confidently think "I am a very strong candidate for this lab and am better than >90% of people doing research".

There are a few routes you can do: Taking a lot of classes related to major, well known achievements, or previous research experience.

I took the coursework route. By completing a lot of CS coursework (all of undergrad and some grad), it made me stand out as a high school student. I know most people do not take this route, but this route is honestly the easiest.

If you perform very well in well known ECs, (JMO/AMO, USACO Plat, USNCO camp/USPhO camp, ISEF finalist), it'll get you there too. Summer research/intern programs (SSP, RSI, PROMYS), they'll also get you there. I would always recommend summer research programs before formal research, as formal research is harder because it was not meant for high schoolers ( you never pay to do formal research, at best it's unpaid and paid if you're really good ).

For <=9th graders, I would recommend EC route. 10/11th graders, summer research programs. 12th graders, you should have already maxed out a route (and probably don't need this guide).

Both routes (ECs/Summer programs) should be very helpful for college admissions, so its really up to you to decide if you like competitions or research more (a lot of people I know do both though, so do note that). The courseload route is very specific, and I don't recommend it to most people unless you are a 9th grader ready to permanently lock yourself to a major (this is the only way to become impressive with it). Of course, it is very possible to go down many routes. If you can do that, it is probably a good idea to.

Once you get good, the cold email response rate should be somewhere above 10%. At better universities, you will need to be stronger (better ECs (camps) or +research exp, ssp + research exp, all coursework + research exp). Note all "research exp" can be replaced with "intern exp", but internships are significantly harder since they are often paid (they are somewhere around the difficulty of paid research).

A note on this: I see people that just spam hundreds of personalized cold emails to profs (<1% response rate) and get their research. This might work, but IMO is not a great idea. Don't get research for a checkbox on a college app please. This method can easily get you a professor that is not specialized in your interest & doesn't know how to help you. If the research is not in your field of interest, and you don't want to do it, then don't do it. Your time is best used on things that interest you, which may perhaps be an EC in which you are trying to get a top award. Summer research programs are pretty exploratory with broad topics, those are way better (though expensive) if you aren't sure what you are interested in/you are only interested in a few labs that you have no chance for.

Another note on this: For speedrunning (E.g, FAANG, university-level coauthor pubs, etc) (Critcal: this is very different than college apps), I have a different stance. Getting experience for acceptance into higher labs/companies is pretty critical. I will assume anyone speedrunning has already maxed out one of the routes and is starting to hit dimishing returns, in which case even research that doesn't interest you will be more beneficial for your next step in life.

2. Have a very strong direction.

I will assume that once you have maxed out a path of "getting good", you will have a very clear idea of kind of research a professor does. This is important, because you need to tie his research with your response.

If you get a response, you will meet with the professor.

Of course, while professors know high schoolers these days are doing stuff for the sole purpose of college admissions, they will never say that. Instead, they want to see what kind of excuse you can come up with by asking the following question(s):

"What are you're goals in life? How does my [lab or research] help you achieve those goals?"

As I said, they already know the answer is college admissions, so they don't want to hear that. Instead, they want to hear about:

• Your Interests (what kind of fields you're interested in)
• Your previous research experience (if any), and your projects (if no previous experience)
• Your career interests & future goals (very critical, please be as specific as possible)
• What kind of colleges you're applying to (this helps them know how to help your application)

There will be additional questions depending on which route you took. Though in general, the conversation will go pretty chill, as professors usually are relaxed about this topic. The better you are, the more you can bomb these questions as professors are extremely willing to help high talent get somewhere.

Prepare a very strong core particularly around "Interests" and "Career Interests/Goals", and find a way to present "prev exp/projects" in a way that supports those. Make sure the colleges you select to mention specialize in those fields, or are general all-rounder colleges like "Stanford" or "MIT" ( though this does not matter that much as professors will not expect you to know what each college is good at).

Ultimately, find a way that your "Interests" and "Career Interests/Goals" relate to the profs research, and present them in a way such that a professor understands how to help you via his/her specialty. If you interest them enough, they'll actually want to help you out with these (e.g, provide advice/positions/connections), and that is more beneficial than them solely giving you a research job.

3. Actually email

Pretty self explanatory. 

Do not be scared to email. There was a reddit post somewhere that was laughing at students panicking on how to cold email, because at the end of the day, profs don't care and are getting free unpaid work. There is a certain amount of truth in this (even though it was a satire post), but the biggest takeaway from it is that profs don't really care if you cold email them. If they're interested, they'll respond, if not, they'll ghost and forget about it.

Don't get discouraged if they ghost. Send another email or follow it up. I personally avoid sending more than 2 cold emails a week though, as profs are already pretty busy people and have their inboxes flooded everyday.

If you don't know how to start, it's fine. Just copy a cold email template from somewhere, or use mine. 

Hello,

I am [Name] and I am a student at [x] High School. I saw that [your lab/professor] has openings for undergraduates with strong [what the lab/prod looks for] fundamentals as well as interest in working with [something related].  I have a strong knowledge of [major fields] as well as various experiences with [specific subfields].

I saw the many projects and topics on [your lab's/your] website; they all look fascinating to work on, and I would love to work on projects like those. In addition, [something specific about the research or a class they taught]

Would you be interested in a quick meeting some time this week or next week?

Thanks,

[Name]

Note: I am not a professional writer, so feel free to tweak that cold email. It worked for me, though you may need to adjust it if you have experience in SSP or a SciOly summer program (albeit, I doubt those people who already have those would need this post).

Recommendations: Send from university email ([email protected]), take DE classes with prof (graduate classes will significantly increase chance of response), look for profs/labs with open positions.