Tell High School Students to Stop Contacting Professors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid didn't do it, but College Essay Guy recommended emailing a professor. The idea was if you get a response back and engage in a conversation, your "why us" essay can be more specific.

"I have spoken with Dr Larla and am really looking forward to taking their Obsessive Parenting class."

I would not trust CEG’s advice. Brought my kid’s personal rating down due to awful essays.

What bad advice?

[Anonymous]

All this has to stop and one of several culprits is the college consultant industry that’s constantly trying to curate and package kids. If kids do something during the summer, what’s wrong with normal summer jobs like scooping ice cream or life guarding or working retail?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

+1

It’s insulting. No 17 year old can be helpful to them without a lot of work and handholding. Why does anyone feel entitled to their time?

These are probably the same people who moan about faculty kid acceptances. It’s right in line with the complete disrespect they have for the profession.

So professors shouldn't have an interest in growing their fields and developing talent? Yes, teaching others new skills is work. Professors of course do not have unlimited bandwidth. But it's just depressing that this many academia aren't motivated or creative enough to figure out ways to support younger students at all, and only want help to be a one-way street. BTW, my dad was a professor and dean for decades and made time for his students. But I've also observed plenty of prima donna academics over the years who barely interact with students at all. Seems to be getting worse.

Do you all really want to pay 40-100k annually to send your kids to schools where professors prioritize email exchanges with high school students (many of whom haven’t even applied) over your kid, who is an actual student? Does that seem like a good use of your money?

I find this thread depressing and inconsistent with the attitudes of my best professors. The original complaint is very petty - as though it's simply too much effort to ignore junk e-mail. And now we've got a parent pulling the "my tuition dollars" complaint. As though education is only a purchased service and nothing more transcendent. (I thought professors hated that attitude.)

When I was in high school, I had a class where we had to invite a guest speaker from a career that we were interested in. I invited a person who my father did a small amount of business with (not a friend). To this day, I'm still amazed that the guy took time out of his day to come to my high school and speak to my class. I wasn't anybody to him. And it was a bit awkward for him - I'm sure it was a one-off for him to talk to kids that age. But I learned some things from his talk, and I'd hope he felt honored that someone wanted to hear about his work.

It takes very little effort to ignore solicitations. And a little extra graciousness where there might be a bit of mutual benefit is really appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BECAUSE THERE ARE HIGH SCHOOLS WHO REQUIRE STUDENTS TO DO RESEARCH PROJECTS WITH A COLLEGE PROFESSOR.

My kid had to do that. He cold-contacted dozens of profs in different universities for a school-mandated mini research project. Only one responded, and he was really nice, and my kid was very grateful and tried to take up the least amount of his time as possible. He aced the project and thanked the professor.

You don't even need to respond to these emails, OP. All we're asking is that you stop whining about children who are required by their schools to do certain things. YOU LOOK NASTY.

This must be utter nonsense. I am a college professor. I am beholden to the students at my own institution. Why would I utilize my free time to teach a high school student? This is an asinine expectation from a high school, and so I call BS.

Not BS. The magnet program at Blair has this exact requirement, so my kid as well emailed a bunch of local profs to see if he could work on a project for the summer before his senior year.

If you don't want to help the high school kids, then just delete their emails! They are getting experience reaching out to people who work in fields they're interested in - there's literally no skin off your nose. My kid heard back from 2 of the 5 or so profs he wrote and they were very nice. He ended up doing some math research or something for the one guy, and now goes to that university, and is majoring in that department.

I think OP is kind of jerky. I'm also an academic and I call BS on the "I'm so busy I don't have time to delete emails" line.

Parents need to band together and stop this. You need to push back on HS teachers with these stupid requirements that are not realistic in today's world and put even more pressure on pressurized students. If we can get our kids out of gym (because they do varsity or specialized sports or whatever) we can get them out of a truly obnoxious and ridiculous assignment like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

+1

It’s insulting. No 17 year old can be helpful to them without a lot of work and handholding. Why does anyone feel entitled to their time?

These are probably the same people who moan about faculty kid acceptances. It’s right in line with the complete disrespect they have for the profession.

So professors shouldn't have an interest in growing their fields and developing talent? Yes, teaching others new skills is work. Professors of course do not have unlimited bandwidth. But it's just depressing that this many academia aren't motivated or creative enough to figure out ways to support younger students at all, and only want help to be a one-way street. BTW, my dad was a professor and dean for decades and made time for his students. But I've also observed plenty of prima donna academics over the years who barely interact with students at all. Seems to be getting worse.

Do you all really want to pay 40-100k annually to send your kids to schools where professors prioritize email exchanges with high school students (many of whom haven’t even applied) over your kid, who is an actual student? Does that seem like a good use of your money?

I find this thread depressing and inconsistent with the attitudes of my best professors. The original complaint is very petty - as though it's simply too much effort to ignore junk e-mail. And now we've got a parent pulling the "my tuition dollars" complaint. As though education is only a purchased service and nothing more transcendent. (I thought professors hated that attitude.)

When I was in high school, I had a class where we had to invite a guest speaker from a career that we were interested in. I invited a person who my father did a small amount of business with (not a friend). To this day, I'm still amazed that the guy took time out of his day to come to my high school and speak to my class. I wasn't anybody to him. And it was a bit awkward for him - I'm sure it was a one-off for him to talk to kids that age. But I learned some things from his talk, and I'd hope he felt honored that someone wanted to hear about his work.

It takes very little effort to ignore solicitations. And a little extra graciousness where there might be a bit of mutual benefit is really appreciated.

I get your point. I'm not the OP and agree that ignoring junk/ unsolicited email is fine. However, when the junk email comes from 15 years olds who are very sincere, it's guilt-inducing. I think the OP wants to cut down on that guilt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

And I think you haven’t bothered to read the thread. The kids are being told they need to do research. They would probably be happier spending one their last free summers lifeguarding than do research.

Blame the HSs, the AOs, the consultants and the parents.

Don't blame the AO's. I speak to AO's all of the time (athletic recruiting). I have never been asked about a kids research even at the very top schools. They ask about a lot of stuff but research never comes up.

Athletic recruits are hooked. A 4.0, good test scores, and "standard strong" ECs are more than enough. Just because athletes do not benefit much from research does not mean no one does.

Also, have your talked to Caltech or MIT AOs?

I do blame the AOs. This is in their control. All their false concern for kids’ mental/emotional well-being is just cr@p.

DP. The AOs are dealing with too many applicants, so I honestly think parents are mainly to blame for the situation. It only takes a quick read through DCUM to see angry, desperate, prestige-obsessed parents clamoring for the top schools which do not have enough seats for their liking. How many of these kids would authentically care about attending a selective school if they weren't encouraged to seek out prestige for its own sake? Meanwhile other schools are going to have to shutter due to low enrollment. It is fine to "aim high" but it is not reasonable to believe that your kids are entitled to a seat. The angriest parents are the most entitled, believing that their kids inherently deserve something while other kids do not. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that their kid is going to get to go to college, and whether their kid will be successful is up to them and what they make of the experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It might help to consider how the professor can justify time- and resource-expenditure on a high-schooler in response to institutional incentives.

My kid did a free summer STEM program at our local research university that gave him legitimate access (no cold-calling!) to a few of the profs there because those profs had agreed to sponsor a certain number of HS kids in their labs for the summer. It was a thing they did and got credit for doing internally: they put those kids' names on their CVs and the kids' photos on the lab's website and later bragged about the kids' college admission successes. At the end of the summer, my kid had a good enough working relation with one of the grad students in the lab where he'd worked over the summer that it was natural to extend the arrangement through the school year.

But here's the key: these profs were given an institutional incentive to welcome those high-schoolers (rising seniors) into their labs.

With no such institutional incentive, it's just cruel to expect high-schoolers to cold-call professors seeking research experience. That's like expecting undergrads to recruit a future dissertation committee by asking random profs to do them a personal favor. The institutional incentives to work with grad students and undergrads can be extended to high-schoolers, but it takes some advance work that high schools and universities ought to be doing together.

So who has the power here, if not the professors? Dean's? Chancellors?

Professors have no power here, and moreover, so long as the admitted students are well-prepared for the work, they don't care at admissions. Administrators may be more concerned, as the aura of prestige is very important for attracting and yielding tuition-paying students and donations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

And I think you haven’t bothered to read the thread. The kids are being told they need to do research. They would probably be happier spending one their last free summers lifeguarding than do research.

Blame the HSs, the AOs, the consultants and the parents.

Don't blame the AO's. I speak to AO's all of the time (athletic recruiting). I have never been asked about a kids research even at the very top schools. They ask about a lot of stuff but research never comes up.

Athletic recruits are hooked. A 4.0, good test scores, and "standard strong" ECs are more than enough. Just because athletes do not benefit much from research does not mean no one does.

Also, have your talked to Caltech or MIT AOs?

I do blame the AOs. This is in their control. All their false concern for kids’ mental/emotional well-being is just cr@p.

DCUM generally thinks AOs are liars, but you're blaming them for something they have never told you is required?

Definitely smarter to go with people on the internet or consultants. The consultants who haven't worked in admissions, have irrelevant info because they retired years ago, or who were part-time readers doing data entry and first looks at essays and letters of rec. Seems like a great plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It might help to consider how the professor can justify time- and resource-expenditure on a high-schooler in response to institutional incentives.

My kid did a free summer STEM program at our local research university that gave him legitimate access (no cold-calling!) to a few of the profs there because those profs had agreed to sponsor a certain number of HS kids in their labs for the summer. It was a thing they did and got credit for doing internally: they put those kids' names on their CVs and the kids' photos on the lab's website and later bragged about the kids' college admission successes. At the end of the summer, my kid had a good enough working relation with one of the grad students in the lab where he'd worked over the summer that it was natural to extend the arrangement through the school year.

But here's the key: these profs were given an institutional incentive to welcome those high-schoolers (rising seniors) into their labs.

With no such institutional incentive, it's just cruel to expect high-schoolers to cold-call professors seeking research experience. That's like expecting undergrads to recruit a future dissertation committee by asking random profs to do them a personal favor. The institutional incentives to work with grad students and undergrads can be extended to high-schoolers, but it takes some advance work that high schools and universities ought to be doing together.

So who has the power here, if not the professors? Dean's? Chancellors?

The point is that this use of professors' time needs to be recognized within the institution. For such mentoring to do any good, it can't be just responding to an email or two. Most professors are happy to do that. Beyond that, most profs would be happy to do one-off outreach at a high school. But having a high-schooler working in your lab? Serving as your informal research assistant? That's a much bigger commitment, and the prof has to be able to put it on her or his CV or otherwise get institutional acknowledgement. For that to be possible, there has to be some kind of program in place -- some way of codifying that 'this is one of the things we do.'

I'm the parent who wrote the post under discussion here, and just yesterday I talked at length with the professor my kid is working with. The prof is putting a fair bit of time in mentoring my kid, and one of the prof's grad students is putting even more time into it, and they're incentivized to do this because each can put it on their CV in terms of their participation in the XYZ Program, an 'outreach' program that everyone internally assessing that CV recognizes as an important use of institutional resources. (The prof told me that participation will count toward their upcoming tenure case -- not as much as teaching or publications, but some.)

Who set up this program? I don't know -- all I can say is 'the university' or maybe 'the university's Board of Governors.' Not individual professors, or an individual department -- though it's possible that an individual department could decide that it's going to encourage its faculty to do such 'outreach' and give credit for that internally under 'departmental service' or the like.

The point is that you can't expect professors to put tens or scores of work-day hours into something that doesn't figure as an institutionally recognized part of their jobs. It's not about whether they're 'kind' or whether they 'care' or the like. It's about the nature of jobs they do. There could be -- and are (you can look them up) -- outreach programs that enable high-schoolers to do college-level research. But cold-calling isn't a way to find them or create them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It might help to consider how the professor can justify time- and resource-expenditure on a high-schooler in response to institutional incentives.

My kid did a free summer STEM program at our local research university that gave him legitimate access (no cold-calling!) to a few of the profs there because those profs had agreed to sponsor a certain number of HS kids in their labs for the summer. It was a thing they did and got credit for doing internally: they put those kids' names on their CVs and the kids' photos on the lab's website and later bragged about the kids' college admission successes. At the end of the summer, my kid had a good enough working relation with one of the grad students in the lab where he'd worked over the summer that it was natural to extend the arrangement through the school year.

But here's the key: these profs were given an institutional incentive to welcome those high-schoolers (rising seniors) into their labs.

With no such institutional incentive, it's just cruel to expect high-schoolers to cold-call professors seeking research experience. That's like expecting undergrads to recruit a future dissertation committee by asking random profs to do them a personal favor. The institutional incentives to work with grad students and undergrads can be extended to high-schoolers, but it takes some advance work that high schools and universities ought to be doing together.

So who has the power here, if not the professors? Dean's? Chancellors?

The point is that this use of professors' time needs to be recognized within the institution. For such mentoring to do any good, it can't be just responding to an email or two. Most professors are happy to do that. Beyond that, most profs would be happy to do one-off outreach at a high school. But having a high-schooler working in your lab? Serving as your informal research assistant? That's a much bigger commitment, and the prof has to be able to put it on her or his CV or otherwise get institutional acknowledgement. For that to be possible, there has to be some kind of program in place -- some way of codifying that 'this is one of the things we do.'

I'm the parent who wrote the post under discussion here, and just yesterday I talked at length with the professor my kid is working with. The prof is putting a fair bit of time in mentoring my kid, and one of the prof's grad students is putting even more time into it, and they're incentivized to do this because each can put it on their CV in terms of their participation in the XYZ Program, an 'outreach' program that everyone internally assessing that CV recognizes as an important use of institutional resources. (The prof told me that participation will count toward their upcoming tenure case -- not as much as teaching or publications, but some.)

Who set up this program? I don't know -- all I can say is 'the university' or maybe 'the university's Board of Governors.' Not individual professors, or an individual department -- though it's possible that an individual department could decide that it's going to encourage its faculty to do such 'outreach' and give credit for that internally under 'departmental service' or the like.

The point is that you can't expect professors to put tens or scores of work-day hours into something that doesn't figure as an institutionally recognized part of their jobs. It's not about whether they're 'kind' or whether they 'care' or the like. It's about the nature of jobs they do. There could be -- and are (you can look them up) -- outreach programs that enable high-schoolers to do college-level research. But cold-calling isn't a way to find them or create them.

Clarification: I'm not the OP but the commenter whose comment is being replied to with the 'Who has the power?' comment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BECAUSE THERE ARE HIGH SCHOOLS WHO REQUIRE STUDENTS TO DO RESEARCH PROJECTS WITH A COLLEGE PROFESSOR.

My kid had to do that. He cold-contacted dozens of profs in different universities for a school-mandated mini research project. Only one responded, and he was really nice, and my kid was very grateful and tried to take up the least amount of his time as possible. He aced the project and thanked the professor.

You don't even need to respond to these emails, OP. All we're asking is that you stop whining about children who are required by their schools to do certain things. YOU LOOK NASTY.

This must be utter nonsense. I am a college professor. I am beholden to the students at my own institution. Why would I utilize my free time to teach a high school student? This is an asinine expectation from a high school, and so I call BS.

Not BS. The magnet program at Blair has this exact requirement, so my kid as well emailed a bunch of local profs to see if he could work on a project for the summer before his senior year.

If you don't want to help the high school kids, then just delete their emails! They are getting experience reaching out to people who work in fields they're interested in - there's literally no skin off your nose. My kid heard back from 2 of the 5 or so profs he wrote and they were very nice. He ended up doing some math research or something for the one guy, and now goes to that university, and is majoring in that department.

I think OP is kind of jerky. I'm also an academic and I call BS on the "I'm so busy I don't have time to delete emails" line.

Parents need to band together and stop this. You need to push back on HS teachers with these stupid requirements that are not realistic in today's world and put even more pressure on pressurized students. If we can get our kids out of gym (because they do varsity or specialized sports or whatever) we can get them out of a truly obnoxious and ridiculous assignment like this.

This would be nice and frankly needed given current events. The undergrads need whatever’s left more. I feel bad professors are put in this position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

+1

It’s insulting. No 17 year old can be helpful to them without a lot of work and handholding. Why does anyone feel entitled to their time?

These are probably the same people who moan about faculty kid acceptances. It’s right in line with the complete disrespect they have for the profession.

So professors shouldn't have an interest in growing their fields and developing talent? Yes, teaching others new skills is work. Professors of course do not have unlimited bandwidth. But it's just depressing that this many academia aren't motivated or creative enough to figure out ways to support younger students at all, and only want help to be a one-way street. BTW, my dad was a professor and dean for decades and made time for his students. But I've also observed plenty of prima donna academics over the years who barely interact with students at all. Seems to be getting worse.

16 and 17 years old high school students are not their students.

My dad was a professor too. And when a talented high school student was allowed to attend classes in his department through normal channels, she received time and attention from professors.

I want to change fields. I am completely unqualified for the job right now. It’s a dream. Why won’t anyone in my aspirational field nurture me? Can’t they see my passion? See how silly this sounds?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I am horrified by this and would never allow it as a parent. But you are a business professor: they want something from you.

On the other hand, sometimes professors in severely undersubscribed areas are really the ones who should be wanting something from the student. After all, some humanities departments are dying on the vine.

For that reason, I did allow/encourage DC to write two very brief emails: one to a professor in a niche humanities major at a top 10 SLAC, and one to a professor in the same field at a very large but prestigious oos state flagship.

To my great surprise, the large school professor answered; he was lovely and informative. The SLAC professor did not.

Guess where kid did not apply?

The SLAC professor was probably conserving her time for the students who contribute to her salary and for whose learning she is responsible.

The idea that faculty have a duty to respond to unsolicited junk mail is nuts. The idea that mentoring high school students would be cost effective for anyone who is doing PhD level humanities or social science research is also nuts. (I have no lab experience. Though I think the value added of a high school student to a lab would be negative, perhaps there are some low level repetitive-but-not-critical tasks that a young student could be made responsible for.)

One reason Lumiere and the other pay-to-play research experience services cost so much is that they have to pay (very junior PhD and postdoc level) people to mentor them.

No mentoring or research was asked for. Just questions about studying there to decide whether to apply ED. You can disagree on whether the SLAC professor was kind of a jerk, but it is a very bad look for SLACs trying to sell themselves on intimate interaction with students. And it is against the prof's self-interest when the department is only producing a few majors a year...and basically has almost no students "for whose learning she is responsible."

You have no idea how many junk emails a particular professor gets per week. If you're on DCUM you know that many many applicants apply for niche subjects with the plan to switch to econ freshman year.

SLACs have whole departments tasked with responding to queries from high school students. It's not the role of teaching faculty to do so.

You apparently don't know any professors in niche humanities majors at SLACs -- or seem to have much familiarity with SLACs at all.

You also have a very interesting take, namely, that a professor at a dying humanities department with 2-3 majors a year should not make an "email's worth of effort" to secure enrollment of a potential major the following year. If you are the "OP business prof," might I suggest you get to know your colleagues in marketing better?

As for the "role of teaching faculty" (a redundant phrase in discussing SLACs), it is, to be sure, not part of their job description. But that means, in the long run, they are in danger of not having jobs.

I was not the OP.

For SLACs, niche departments are service departments. Anthropology and comparative literature professors often teach, for the most part, non-majors who are fulfilling distribution requirements. Some may lament the lack of serious students committed to their discipline; others may think such students take more time and energy than the average.

A big rebound in, for example, the number of art history or German majors is highly unlikely, even if professors in those departments start responding to emails from random high school students.

That’s really the point: this thread is about contacting professors. I gave an example where a high school student contacting one, before committing to, say, ED is not only appropriate but wise (for an actual humanities kid who will not change majors). If a SLAC professor thinks “having such students take(s) more time and energy” than it’s worth, and does not deign to respond to an email, then that’s something the kid really needs to know — all the more so because it is a SLAC. If a professor is the opposite and is psyched to have any kid expressing real, demonstrated interest in an e-mail (unusual, as you are apparently unaware), that’s great information to have as well. I guess you disagree.

Your point that a humanities rebound is not likely is certainly a profound one. But if a professor can increase their majors by 50% every year or so (even from 2 to 3) by answering a few emails, it is highly advisable that they do so, lest they more rapidly lose yet another tenure track “line” in their department or, worse, have their department permanently “consolidated.”

The 16 yr old high schooler doesn’t have “real demonstrated interest” in some boring college research. They are simply trying to check what is perceived as a prestigious box for their college application so they can get into an “elite” school and feel worthy.

If you actually read these posts, the example you are referring to has nothing to do with research and mentoring. Rather, DC was probably applying ED (in only a few weeks) to a SLAC niche humanities department, and wrote a prof. to get a better sense of what it is like majoring in the department (majors yearly could be counted on one hand) before pulling the ED application trigger -- and got no response. Suffice to say, no application was submitted. I am so glad the letter was written before committing, because a similar email was warmly received by a prof at a huge research flagship. Of course an application was submitted there.

There you have it folks, a good reason for a high school kid to contact a professor -- contrary to the thread title.

A high school kid contacting a prof to ask for mentoring and research, on the other hand, is indeed a horrible thing. There is a difference.

That’s still not the role of a professor. What if everyone wrote professors asking about the major?

The kid got valuable information: go to a niche department where a prof is going to go beyond the call of duty (and there are many), or go to one (a SLAC no less; you detractors seem clueless about what profs have to do at SLACs) where one thinks, "This is not my role." Valuable information for the kid to have. Are you seriously arguing kid should not have obtained this valuable info? Er, OK.

So, your decision rule is: only go to a place where a professor answered a random, unsolicited email from a non-matriculated student? While it does say that one particular professor at that university seems dedicated, it does not predict -- at all -- the behavior of professors who reserve their time and energy for matriculated students, or the experience of those students as majors in the department.

Don’t see how you derive a “decision rule” from an anecdote, although your thinking does evince a tendency to dismiss subtleties and get to simplified strawmen so you can deem yourself “right.”

Your assumption that there is no expected correlation whatsoever between one professor’s unresponsiveness and the likely experience of the few majors in the department is almost certainly incorrect on at least two grounds: they may be one of only two or three tenure track profs, i.e. the prof cannot be avoided, and 2) it is basic psychology that this type of person, ceteris paribus, is less likely to go the extra mile than a professor who has already demonstrated a willingness to go the extra mile for a mere prospective applicant. If you really would like to give “equal odds” on that, as you have explicitly stated, I could only wish to bet against you on all sorts of things.

But maybe the unwillingness to go the extra mile for a random prospective student is due to that professor’s earnest commitment to their actual, in-person students.

Life is filled with tugs on our attention, distractions from our most important work. I’m not sure responding to every high school students’ question — especially outside the usual processes that exist for such questions — is their most important work.

Or maybe there is a correlation that you are simply unwilling to acknowledge. In any event, you are clearly not a humanities prof in an undersubscribed field: you are out of your depth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All this has to stop and one of several culprits is the college consultant industry that’s constantly trying to curate and package kids. If kids do something during the summer, what’s wrong with normal summer jobs like scooping ice cream or life guarding or working retail?

+1. Absolutely nothing is wrong with a summer job.

No one needs research for top college admissions. Some consultants are doing quite the sell job on social media and forums like this one and reddit. While their spam is routinely deleted from reddit, they do try to craft their posts not to look like spam. They will note that a number of their clients got into top schools and want readers to assume it's due to their services hooking kids up with "research." They are full of crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s kinda obnoxious for HS kids to think they should get a job doing research.

The professor has a slew of graduate students at his fingertips to help with research. Why would someone think he would ask a kid in HS to help with research?Tell me why. Let me real here.

Go get a job at the mall and leave this professor alone.

And I think you haven’t bothered to read the thread. The kids are being told they need to do research. They would probably be happier spending one their last free summers lifeguarding than do research.

Blame the HSs, the AOs, the consultants and the parents.

Don't blame the AO's. I speak to AO's all of the time (athletic recruiting). I have never been asked about a kids research even at the very top schools. They ask about a lot of stuff but research never comes up.

Athletic recruits are hooked. A 4.0, good test scores, and "standard strong" ECs are more than enough. Just because athletes do not benefit much from research does not mean no one does.

Also, have your talked to Caltech or MIT AOs?

I do blame the AOs. This is in their control. All their false concern for kids’ mental/emotional well-being is just cr@p.

DCUM generally thinks AOs are liars, but you're blaming them for something they have never told you is required?

Definitely smarter to go with people on the internet or consultants. The consultants who haven't worked in admissions, have irrelevant info because they retired years ago, or who were part-time readers doing data entry and first looks at essays and letters of rec. Seems like a great plan.

The AOs can clearly state on their webpages that research relationships with professors at the college level will not be given any more weight in admissions than a regular job.

They bear a great deal of responsibility for not controlling this.