Real Research.
Real Curiosity.
Real Impact.

Research is well-suited to start during middle or high school, building skills in independent thinking, forming research questions, analyzing data, and presenting findings.

Middle school (grades 7–9): Starting early has real advantages. Students mentored by our professor have earned Thermo Fisher top 300 Young Scientist recognition and been nominated for the Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship — a full-tuition private high school scholarship for 7th graders. Early experience means stronger, more confident work by the time high school competitions come around.

Grades 9–10: The ideal window. Committing to a research focus early makes it much easier to plan a coherent academic narrative, activity list, and application identity. Our personalized approach is designed exactly for this stage.

Grades 11–12: Not too late. Students have completed projects the summer before 12th grade with strong results. Even 12th graders can finish a paper, present at a conference, and submit to journals before application deadlines — and the experience itself becomes compelling essay material that shows genuine intellectual engagement.

Topics aren't pre-assigned or chosen from a menu. Over 2–4 weeks, our professor works through deep conversations with each student — exploring their extracurriculars, coursework, interests, and intended major — to discover a topic that's genuinely theirs. That discovery process is itself part of doing real research.

Topic selection considers the student's intended major, activities, community involvement, and leadership background. The goal is a research project that produces real academic results and becomes the foundation of a personal, authentic application story — one that reflects the student's own perspective and curiosity.

Some students arrive with a clear direction; others have no idea where to start. Either is fine. The professor works through suggestions, tries different angles, and adjusts mid-project if needed. Past students have worked in economics, finance, psychology, statistics, environmental engineering, biology, and more — including interdisciplinary projects drawing from hobbies like rowing, hockey, painting, and stock trading.

Browse our student projects page to see the range — and the genuine enthusiasm that comes through in their work.

That's actually where our professor does some of her best work. Not having a direction isn't a problem — it's a starting point. Through focused conversations about a student's activities, classes, and interests, she helps draw out a unique academic thread that can run through the entire application. Many of our strongest projects came from students who walked in with no idea what they wanted to research.

The program is designed around five areas of outcome:

Research skills: A solid foundation in research methodology, statistical tools, and academic writing — the kind students use in college and beyond.

Research output: A completed, personalized research project written as an academic paper and poster.

Academic presentation: A presentation at the Young Scholars Research Conference, with support for submitting to international academic conferences and journals.

Competition participation: Research results submitted to competitions such as ISEF and JSHS science fairs.

Application materials: Outstanding students receive a professor recommendation letter and may continue as research ambassadors or teaching/research assistants — building a leadership narrative around academic service.

All of the above — conference presentations, publications, competition awards, research roles — can be listed across Common App's five academic honors and ten extracurricular activities, and provide strong material for Why Major and supplemental essays.

No legitimate research program can guarantee publication — acceptance is decided by blind peer review, which is outside anyone's control. We support up to three rounds of submission, but outcomes depend on the quality of the work and the standards of each target venue.

What every student does achieve: completing the 16-week research project and presenting at the Young Scholars Research Conference.

For publications and competitions, timelines depend on submission deadlines — typically six months in advance, with acceptance notifications 2–6 months later. For example, students finishing in September submitted to an November international conference and presented that year; students finishing in January have submitted to the following August's statistics conference, with peer review and editorial feedback throughout. More competitive venues take longer.

Both. Every student has their own completely individual research topic — no two students work on the same project. The weekly structure combines individual and group elements:

Weekly 1-on-1 with the professor (30 min): Focused entirely on each student's own research progress and direction.

Weekly 1-on-1 with a TA (60 min): Technical support for software, programming, data analysis, and methodology.

Weekly group research workshop (90 min): Students discuss progress together, work through shared methodological questions, and learn statistical tools as a cohort. The group structure helps everyone stay on pace and produce a strong final presentation.

Yes. Our research professors personally lead every weekly 1-on-1 research session — not outsourced to PhD students or TAs. This is our core commitment and the most fundamental difference from most programs out there. TAs handle technical support (software, coding, data analysis). Academic direction and research thinking are guided by the professor throughout.

What admissions officers respond to isn't the research project itself — it's the genuine curiosity and independent thinking a student demonstrates through the process. That's precisely what doing real research cultivates. When most applicants have similar activity lists, a student who can speak authentically about what they investigated, why it mattered, and what they found stands out as someone with real intellectual engagement.

Conference presentations, publications, competition awards, and research roles can fill Common App academic honors and extracurricular slots, and provide strong, specific material for Why Major and supplemental essays. A professor recommendation letter from a genuine research collaboration also carries considerably more weight than a standard teacher's letter.

Yes. Engineering covers a wide range: biomedical engineering, environmental and energy engineering, AI and data science crossed with biology, and more. The professor works from each student's background to find the right angle.

Past examples: one student researched how EV adoption rates affect regional environmental and economic indicators; another used Monte Carlo modeling to simulate the effect of carbon emissions on extreme weather events and inform environmental policy design; a student involved in robotics club worked with the professor to develop a study on how robotic arm design affects grasp success rates — starting from conversations about his actual role and questions within the club.

Engineering topics follow the same principle as all our projects: they connect closely to the student's extracurriculars and application direction, making the research feel genuinely personal.

They're quite different — though they can complement each other well.

Essay competitions ask students to respond to a given question with analysis and argument. Everyone answers the same prompt, largely through qualitative reasoning.

Research means identifying an original question, conducting a literature review to find the gap, forming a hypothesis, collecting data, running models or experiments, drawing conclusions, and producing findings that can inform real decisions. The output is a research paper or poster, not an essay response. And crucially, the topic is entirely the student's own — shaped by their interests and background, not assigned.

Research experience also tends to enrich essay writing. Many of our students compete in both. One 11th grader who participated in John Locke and her school's debate team — both focused on environmental issues but primarily qualitative — worked with the professor to build out a quantitative research thread: studying how EV adoption affects environmental and economic indicators, building models, and completing the project in the fall semester. She presented online in January and submitted to major conferences.

Most students join with zero research experience — that's entirely normal and exactly where we add the most value. The professor is skilled at helping students turn a vague interest into a focused research question and building academic research skills from the ground up.

Approximately 5 hours per week, including all sessions and guided independent research. Sessions are scheduled on weekends and evenings to avoid conflicts with school. The structured weekly rhythm helps students stay on pace even during busy academic periods.

Student A came from an all-girls school with a strong interest in women's rights and machine learning. The professor guided her to collect tens of thousands of texts, apply Python NLP to analyze sentiment, language structure, and themes, and study what factors influence the success rate of women's rights petitions. Her work was presented at an international business and economics conference, and she submitted to the North American statistics conference for publication consideration.

Student B (10th grade) wanted to study finance and enjoyed following the stock market. The professor guided him to collect over a decade of financial policy texts, apply machine learning to study the effect of monetary policy language on stock market prices and volatility. His paper was accepted at an international economics conference, selected for the University of Iowa's High School Research Symposium, and submitted to the statistics conference and multiple summer programs.

Student C was interested in environmental engineering and economics. She studied how EV adoption rates affect regional environmental and economic indicators — starting in September, completing in January, presenting online, and submitting to the North American statistics conference.

See more at our student projects page and achievements page.

Email us or take our free self-assessment. We'll give you an honest evaluation of fit and specific research direction suggestions — no sales pitch, just a genuine assessment.