Look at your local college & go through the courses and find a course that peaks their interest. Email the professor and ask for an internship. Don't just send a cold email. Do some research. |
I’d watch the approach. Your child is as advanced as seniors in MATH, not STEM. Classes to be taken in the future won’t help. The answer is that a HS freshman can do very little for a professor. I know of a kid who researched with a professor at a local college based on a referral from his counselor. He was 16 (almost 17). |
Then how do high schoolers get research internships/positions at state colleges, let alone T50s? |
Have her get a regular job. She's too young.
Also, summer is almost here. Maybe by next summer, you can identify some specific program that is open to her grade. That's still going to require a lot of research and planning. |
My 15 year old is a lifeguard. But I agree with the rest of the advice. |
Oy vey OP. There are other skills your 9th grader can work on during the summer if she must do anything. |
Prof here. If just looking for unpaid experience with a Prof, then I agree with the email approach.
I wouldn't give a HS student (or probably an undergraduate) a task that needs brain-work (math/stats/real writing). But I often have work like data-cleaning (working in excel to make sure the data are in the right format) or collecting data from the web or that kind of thing that I'm happy to have a young person do. If they prove themselves, then they'd move to harder tasks. |
Has to be through your connections though… |
Do some university classes |
After thinking hard about the implications of either option, and which is worst for society — and they are each pretty bad — I would say that the child doing this of their own accord is the most disturbing and dysfunctional. I would take the kid’s computer away, tell them not to bother professors until they are enrolled at that university, and make them go play in the yard. MIT be damned. |
So many parents like OP in Bethesda. I'm glad we moved away. |
A little harsher than I would have put it, but +1 |