Tell High School Students to Stop Contacting Professors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here with an update. I asked one local high school student who told him to email me, and said it was his own initiative.

I just received another email from a college counselor who wants to meet me to discuss a "mentorship opportunity". Such gall!

Good lord, just hit delete and move on. I'm not a professor, but I'm at a place that a lot of young people seek to be employed/have internships. Sometimes I respond, sometimes I don't. I don't get resentful that people write me---at least they're bothering to do something rather than playing video games all day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here with an update. I asked one local high school student who told him to email me, and said it was his own initiative.

I just received another email from a college counselor who wants to meet me to discuss a "mentorship opportunity". Such gall!

Poor, poor, OP.

Tell the CC no.

Understand the student is not contacting you because they want so desperately to work with you. Even if they are doing it off their own bat, they are doing because some adult in the admissions game told them to. Have a little sympathy.

Have you told your admissions department to stop considering any research opportunities in their admissions decisions? Have you given them or any college admissions office your feedback?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have never heard an AO say they require research/mentoring. The consultants must be pushing this.

I have heard it directly from AOs on multiple podcasts. It shows intellectual curiosity and match to major. Those “pointy” kids have research. So common at our school, particularly the kids getting into Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

This is so incredibly toxic.

We need to go ahead and be done with it by tossing kids into lottery pools once they clear a certain threshold for each school. The arms race is so unhealthy for them.

This. So . Much. This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As business professor, I get tons of annoying emails from students wanting "research internships" or "mentorship". Some are graduate students, some are undergrads, and some are in high school. Some are in my county, some are in my state. Some are in India or Bangladesh.

"Dear Professor X, I am a junior at XYZ high school and am greatly impressed by your paper "" [published before this kid was born]. I would like to study under you."

One elementary school girl from across the country asked for a free sweatshirt. Obviously her teacher told her to do this. One private high school student bragged that he founded and ran a charitable investment fund. The assets under management were less than one year of tuition. Some college counselors must be telling them to get lines on their resumes. One stranger sent his resume and asked for a letter of recommendation.

This is all an annoying waste of time. I mostly teach graduate students, never lower-level undergrads. High schools don't even offer courses in my subject. Who is telling students to do this?

NP here.

Your culprit is CCIR - Cambridge Centre for International Research. I am sitting on a webinar targetted at HS teacher sponsors of a STEM club and part of the programming is from CCIR. They are specifically advising high school students to cold email professors looking for summer research assistant positions in order to make themselves stand out in college applications. SMH

PLEASE put a comment in the chat that the cold-email route is likely to lead to nothing but disappointed / frustrated students (not to mention annoyed professors). The strategy is rarely, if ever, successful and it's not kind to unhooked kids to push it!

How exactly do you suppose the kids that are "hooked" managed to get "hooked" in the first place? They probably were the successful ones at coldemailing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As business professor, I get tons of annoying emails from students wanting "research internships" or "mentorship". Some are graduate students, some are undergrads, and some are in high school. Some are in my county, some are in my state. Some are in India or Bangladesh.

"Dear Professor X, I am a junior at XYZ high school and am greatly impressed by your paper "" [published before this kid was born]. I would like to study under you."

One elementary school girl from across the country asked for a free sweatshirt. Obviously her teacher told her to do this. One private high school student bragged that he founded and ran a charitable investment fund. The assets under management were less than one year of tuition. Some college counselors must be telling them to get lines on their resumes. One stranger sent his resume and asked for a letter of recommendation.

This is all an annoying waste of time. I mostly teach graduate students, never lower-level undergrads. High schools don't even offer courses in my subject. Who is telling students to do this?

NP here.

Your culprit is CCIR - Cambridge Centre for International Research. I am sitting on a webinar targetted at HS teacher sponsors of a STEM club and part of the programming is from CCIR. They are specifically advising high school students to cold email professors looking for summer research assistant positions in order to make themselves stand out in college applications. SMH

PLEASE put a comment in the chat that the cold-email route is likely to lead to nothing but disappointed / frustrated students (not to mention annoyed professors). The strategy is rarely, if ever, successful and it's not kind to unhooked kids to push it!

How exactly do you suppose the kids that are "hooked" managed to get "hooked" in the first place? They probably were the successful ones at coldemailing!

Um, no. The successful ones have their parents call their professor friends from college/gradschool/the country club and ask them to let their 15 year old do XYZ so they can put it on their college app. Professor likely feels the same way as OP, but does it anyway, because of friendship. Maybe a few are successful cold emailing, but it's probably a very tiny share.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here with an update. I asked one local high school student who told him to email me, and said it was his own initiative.

I just received another email from a college counselor who wants to meet me to discuss a "mentorship opportunity". Such gall!

Good lord, just hit delete and move on. I'm not a professor, but I'm at a place that a lot of young people seek to be employed/have internships. Sometimes I respond, sometimes I don't. I don't get resentful that people write me---at least they're bothering to do something rather than playing video games all day.

This. It's like a humblebrag from the professor. Plenty of people get unsolicited email daily. No reason you can't delete it.