HOW ADMISSIONS OFFICERS EVALUATE HIGH SCHOOL RESEARCH PROJECTS
WHAT WE LEARNED
We surveyed 3 current and 3 former admissions officers to learn about how they evaluate research papers in the admissions office.
The report analyzes admissions officers’ evaluation process of high school research papers in college applications.
Admissions officers value hands-on involvement, skills, curiosity, and interest in the field when evaluating research papers.
They look for authenticity through advisor credentials, presentations, and publications to determine the merit of the research.
While publication is a valuable ‘cherry on top’, it is not a requirement for the paper to be considered.
The report recommends that applicants should include a well-written abstract, highlight mentor credentials, submit a Letter of Recommendation from the mentor, add external links to videos and publications, and trace the evolution of the student’s interests to present their research in the best possible way.
THE RISING ROLE OF RESEARCH IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
Research has become an increasingly important part of high school students’ university applications, but there is a lack of clarity on how colleges evaluate the value of this research.
The Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, E. Whitney Soule, reported that “Nearly one-third of the admitted students engaged in academic research during their time in high school, many earning national and international accolades for research. [...] Our faculty and fellow students across Penn’s schools and research centers are ready to welcome this latest generation of dynamic scholars who will continue to create new knowledge to benefit the world3.”
However, there is no prescribed formula for how best to depict a student’s research in their applications. Raheel Masood, former Admissions Officer at Georgetown University, described the process of evaluating research, and the application itself as an “inexact science” which has “so many different factors” at play.
Based on inputs from three current and three former admissions officers at Purdue University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Dartmouth College, Union College, and the University of Cambridge through live interviews, podcasts and videos featuring admissions officers from top US universities, email correspondence, and university admissions websites, we expound on how colleges assess high school research projects.
We find that admissions officers value research that fits into the larger narrative of the student’s application, and assess it on the basis of how well they have communicated their contributions and learnings from the process. It also offers recommendations from these admissions officers on how best the student can present their research project in the application.
“Our faculty and fellow students across Penn’s schools and research centers are ready to welcome this latest generation of dynamic scholars who will continue to create new knowledge to benefit the world”
HOW ADMISSIONS OFFICERS EVALUATE RESEARCH
ADMISSIONS OFFICERS WANT RESEARCH THAT IS SUCCINCTLY SUMMARIZED AND PUNCHY
At most universities, admissions officers evaluate a set of applications based on specific criteria like academic accomplishments, letters of recommendation, potential, community involvement, and extracurricular activities¹. They then select specific applicants to move forward to the next round of discussion.
Alumni interviews are an important part of the admission process at several competitive universities in the United States. They offer the admissions committee the opportunity to better understand the applicant’s academic profile and extracurricular activities. At the same time, it provides the applicant with the opportunity to make their case once more in person.
Terry Gilbert, an Admissions Officer at Purdue University, notes that larger or more competitive universities have a team of around 30 admissions officers or readers who evaluate between 35,000 to 440,000 applications in a short amount of time. Ginger Fay, a former Admissions Officer at Duke University, adds that readers have between 5-15 minutes to review each application, depending on the amount of material included, and that at highly selective schools, “an experienced admissions reader typically reads an application in under 10 minutes.” Some universities read applications twice and then review them in a full committee. This means that unless an applicant's research project stands out, it is unlikely to be given extra attention.
In this context, admissions officers emphasize the importance of being concise and interesting in students’ descriptions of their research. Since a research project would count as an ‘additional, or extra’ feature of the application, it is important to highlight what the admissions officer is supposed to glean from it.
Ginger Fay pointed out that, “An admissions officer has very limited time to read an application and they need to put their attention to things they are expecting to see. So for anything additional, you need to do as much as you can to help them get to the point as soon as possible.”
Masood reinforced the importance of explaining your research “eloquently and specifically, rather than superficially; even with three sentences that show, ‘I did the research, and this was the outcome.’”
For students applying to universities in the UK, Roshan Walkerley, Deputy Head of Student Recruitment (International) at the University of Cambridge, confirms that succinctness is important, as the application process has “very limited opportunities for the student to include additional projects, and the personal statement can only be 600 words.”
“An experienced admissions reader at a highly selective school typically reads an application in under 10 minutes”
ADMISSIONS OFFICERS LOOK FOR RESEARCH THAT CONNECTS TO THE FIELD OF APPLICATION
Admissions officers also spoke about the importance of the student’s research project working in cohesion with the rest of the application. They are interested in seeing how your project contributed to your interests and how it would help you during your college program. Masood spoke about how the research project should not feel ‘force-fit’ into the application, saying, “If you have a kid who is applying for Physics and Mathematics, and doing research outside that boundary, you worry about the connection, or wonder if they just do it for the sake of doing research, so you worry about the fit.”
Crucially, these officers are looking to see that the student has engaged with the discipline that they are applying to study, and “testing the hypothesis” that this would be the right choice by exploring research in the field, before making the “very expensive investment of attending a university based on strength in the field (Fay).” However, even when the research project is directly related to the discipline that the student is applying for, it is important to trace the connection and the journey of the student’s interests.
“So you might say, ‘Ah! This student started to get interested in the environment, and then they began to investigate it a little more deeply through
their curriculum choice and then through some extra-curricular involvement by choosing an internship or research project.’”
HOW DOES INDEPENDENT ACADEMIC RESEARCH COMPLEMENT IN-SCHOOL RESEARCH (E.G. AP CAPSTONE, IB EXTENDED ESSAY)?
A significant part of the process of evaluating extra-curriculars in a college application is looking at how students choose to spend the hours when they’re not in school. Admissions officers want to know what a student chooses to do when “nobody is telling them what to do. And certainly, this (research) is an opportunity that would be among those things. (Fay)”. It is also important to them to take into consideration the context and circumstances that each applicant comes from when evaluating the contents of the application.
Many students for whom independent research is part of their A level or IB curriculum, will have their school research appraised as part of their application, however, “if they are doing extra research on top of that, admissions officers will be aware of that and we'll look at that. (Walkerley)”. Fay summarizes this by saying, “What they want to see is students taking every opportunity that is available to them and then trying to stretch it a little bit further. Any way that a student has identified something and maybe could take just that extra step further and do that. That's something that admissions officers absolutely do recognize and celebrate.”
When presented with student research, admissions officers are checking for evidence that the student has developed a new set of skills, or sharpened existing ones, by pushing themselves.
Much of the curriculum at universities is dependent on students being able to motivate themselves for extensive amounts of independent work, which is a valuable skill they develop while working on a research paper. Another is the ability to identify a problem and seek to solve it by asking important questions (Walkerley).
Ginger Fay advises that “the intention is for the student to get something meaningful out of the work.” If this intention is met, and the student has actually done the work, whether a research program is paid or unpaid does not “devalue the experience.” She reminds us that students have to pay to participate in a lot of activities, like summer camps, or sports, which are all evaluated as part of the college application. Raheel Masood adds that “If the research itself speaks well of the student, then fair enough!”
“We’re looking to understand that connection and that subject focus that a student has had in their research and how that will be relevant to their future studies. ”
DOES AUTHENTICITY AND PUBLICATION MATTER: AN AO PERSPECTIVE
ADMISSIONS OFFICERS VALUE TRUE “SIGNALS” OF AUTHENTICITY (E.G., PUBLICATION, RECOMMENDATIONS, COMPETITION WINS, ETC.)
Admissions Officers mentioned that they often look to external sources to validate the rigour and authenticity of the research that is presented in the application. Admissions officers will take into account if and where a paper has been shared externally. Examples of this would be students sharing their work at symposia, conferences, or poster competitions. This confirms for the admissions officers that the paper has been seen and reviewed by a community of people, including counselors, schools, and teachers in related fields who are familiar with and can verify the work that the student is doing (Fay).
While the publication of papers is viewed favourably, as something that contributed to the authenticity of the paper, during the process of evaluation, it would not be considered a requirement for a research paper, but a “feather in the cap.” Including a research paper in the application should highlight the skills that it taught the student, and according to Walkerley, the most relevant skills for preparing a student for university-level study can be gained from the research process itself. These include “actually going out and completing their own research, looking at the literature review, looking at the current research that's out there, and identifying your own question (Walkerley).” Fay emphasizes that she would give the students credit for even being willing to put their work out for other people to read and comment on, but insists that it does not “devalue research if it is not published.” However, Gilbert believes that in a “competitive admission environment, there has to be a level of differentiation” between what papers simply pass muster and those that stand out, “All research is good, some research (when published) is better!” While Masood says that the quality of the publication is important when vetting a published paper, Fay suggested that expecting the admissions officers to know the quality and standard of all high school publications is asking for too much.
ADMISSIONS OFFICERS BELIEVE THAT MORE INTENSIVE INVOLVEMENT IN A RESEARCH PROJECT IS ALWAYS BETTER FOR A STUDENT (E.G., USING DATA ANALYSIS, RUNNING AN EXPERIMENT, ETC.)
Apart from the experts supporting the student with their project, admissions officers are also keen to learn the extent to which students themselves get involved. They look out for students who are curious about the subject that they are studying and how much work they are willing to put into it. Gilbert observes that he would be impressed if a student wrote that they were the “co-author on a paper that had some analysis of some type” in it, as this would be compelling enough that the student was able to get their “hands dirty” with the data and come to a certain conclusion with it, and be indicative of the student’s ability to conduct research.
Masood also adds that what the officers are looking for is evidence of whether the student “fetches coffee for the boss, or actually does meaningful work.” This is the standard that they apply across all additional projects or internships. Irrespective of the kind of paper that is written, they want to see that the “outcome is demonstrable” while helping the student to “acquire some skills or gain some exposure (Masood).”
“...what the (admissions) officers are looking for is evidence of whether the student ‘fetches coffee for the boss, or actually does meaningful work.”
RECOMMENDATION FOR STUDENTS DOING RESEARCH (How to Include Research in the Application)
To summarize, here are some best practices that we discovered by speaking to admissions officers:
1. Include a brief, but well-written abstract of your research paper.
Given that admissions officers have very little time to assess the extra-curricular section of the student’s application, Fay suggested that students write a short but powerful abstract that adequately summarizes the entirety of the paper. She shared that the hack here is that the abstract should be so thorough that reading the rest of the paper would be unnecessary, “I do think less is more. So it should be that your abstract tells the story.” She also suggests providing only a link to the published paper rather than the whole document, so that the admissions officer can read it if they are curious or interested.
2. Highlight the qualifications of the people you have worked with and learned from.
Fay also emphasized that if the student worked on the research paper with someone in academia, they should definitely call attention to that, “both in terms of that person's credentials and the institution or organization that they're a part of.”
3. Submit a Letter of Recommendation or Evaluation from your research mentor as a supporting document.
The letter serves to authenticate the quality of the research, and also makes an external case on behalf of the student to the admissions officer. While having Letters of Recommendation in general, is a good, and often required addition to the student’s application, Gilbert says that “not all Letters of Recommendation are equal.” A letter from a mentor that simply states that a student was a helpful addition to the project and that the project would not have been possible without them, is fine, but when they explicitly state “what that student contributed, how they contributed it, and their potential to contribute to research in the future,” this makes for a better letter that can bolster the rest of the application. A former Admissions Officer from Dartmouth College also talks about how the most valuable letters of recommendation come from mentors who have “seen the student grapple with questions of how to do research, and the quality of the student’s mind.”
4. Include external links to videos and publications that describe the research project.
The admissions officers also mentioned the value of including external links to videos, blogs, or publications that would help them understand the nature and implications of the research project in the student’s own words. Having an embedded video of the student talking about their research, along with meaningful insights and reflections, running in the background, was helpful to Gilbert, while he evaluated other aspects of the application. He also appreciated links to websites and blog posts in which a student talks about “not just what they've done, but what they've learned and how they're going to apply that research.”
5. Trace the journey of your interests and the role that your research played in that.
Describe what topics, events, or classes got you interested in the research area, and consequently how your research project shaped your curiosity in the field that you are applying for.With admissions officers strapped for time and the instances of research in college applications predicted to rise considerably over the next few years (Dartmouth Admissions Officer), how students present their work is as important as what they do. Of the 259 Lumiere Scholars that we polled from the incoming freshman class, 65% of the students who received acceptances from universities that they applied to early, mentioned their research in their main essays, 50% added it to the ‘Activities’ section of their applications, 47% attached a link or attachment of their paper, and 47% had their mentor write them a detailed Letter of Recommendation (Lumiere Education Early Application Report, January 2023).
Presenting high school research in an application demonstrates to the admissions officers that the student is willing to challenge themselves intellectually, by deep diving into a field that interests them and believes they are passionate about.
Carefully crafting a narrative around the student’s activities and interests helps the admissions committee clearly trace their interests and curiosity, enabling them to ascertain if the student would be a good fit for that program.
OVERVIEW
With admissions officers strapped for time and the instances of research in college applications predicted to rise considerably over the next few years (Dartmouth Admissions Officer), how students present their work is as important as what they do. Of the 259 Lumiere Scholars that we polled from the incoming freshman class, 65% of the students who received acceptances from universities that they applied to early, mentioned their research in their main essays, 50% added it to the ‘Activities’ section of their applications, 47% attached a link or attachment of their paper, and 47% had their mentor write them a detailed Letter of Recommendation (Lumiere Education Early Application Report, January 2023).
Presenting high school research in an application demonstrates to the admissions officers that the student is willing to challenge themselves intellectually, by deep diving into a field that interests them and believes they are passionate about.
Carefully crafting a narrative around the student’s activities and interests helps the admissions committee clearly trace their interests and curiosity, enabling them to ascertain if the student would be a good fit for that program.
