Hey,
Just wanted to tell people about the awesomeness that is the High School Honors Science Program at Michigan State. It's a 7 week research program--you're paired with a lab mentor in a bunch of different areas (plant and soil sciences, biochem, genetics, physics, basically everything there is on campus...). At the end of the 7 weeks, you write a research paper and do a presentation on what you've found to the 27 or so other people that attended the program, as well as the people in their lab. But enough about the logistics...
It was, without a doubt, the best summer I've had. You'll spend countless hours in lab, you'll be upset when all your cells you'd been working on for days die, you'll be overjoyed when your PCR works after countless tries, you might even do some research worthy of intel (4 semifinalists) or siemens (7 semifinalists). I found out that research was really something that people did for a living, and something I wanted to pursue. But the most significant part of the whole experience was in my opinion the people you spend 7 weeks of your life with. This is an amazing group of engaging, quirky, way-too-sciencey people who will amaze you, make you laugh, and make you think. I'm not sure how Dr. Richmond does it, but she'll manage to pick out a group of people with whom you can spend 7 weeks with, but it'll seem like 7 days.
I am sure there are a ton of people who apply just because they want to be able to put down that they did research over the summer. Trust me, if that is why you are applying, you will not really get much out of the program. In my opinion (and I'm sure there were probably people who disagreed with me) HSHSP was about being able to meet other individuals who were just as excited about finding things out as you are, not just in the lab, but outside of the lab as well. Keeping that in mind, HSHSPers as a whole seem to have done pretty well in the first round of college admissions--4 MIT, 1 yale, 1 stanford, 1 caltech, 1 brown, 2 cornell, and we've still got regular decisions to go. But then again, corrolation v. causality...
So. If pulling all nighters cubing and talking about prufrock sounds at all appealing, hshsp@msu.edu . Hopefully some other HSHSPers will post and tell a bit more about their take on things...
↧