Reply to If doing research in high school is unfair and puts poorer students at a disadvantage, what extracurriculars are fair?

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Reply to "If doing research in high school is unfair and puts poorer students at a disadvantage, what extracurriculars are fair?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I saw this Reddit comment about research in high school (https://old.reddit.com/r/AskProfessors/comments/1tg9z5l/high_schooler_interning_at_a_toptier_research/omfaesb/):

“Sigh. High school students shouldn't be doing this.

Maybe just enjoy what's left of your childhood?

And don't participate in things that pad your college applications in a way that's totally unfair to other students who aren't connected to/don't live near/can't afford/don't know about intern opportunities at research universities.
But really this is on the professor who's supporting this nonsense.”

So if students shouldn’t be doing this, what extracurriculars should they do? Even things like sports or robotics favor the privilege [/quote]
Olympiads can be, and most often are, self-studied with free resources.

From an IPhO gold medalist:
[quote]When I was in high school, I heard about the Physics Olympiad from my physics teacher, spent an afternoon searching online for a book recommendation, and bugged my parents to buy Halliday, Resnick, and Krane. They got me a $20 used copy with the spine falling off, and I spent an enjoyable year puzzling over it by myself, reading it on the weekends and during chemistry class. When I
 went to the IPhO that summer, I still only had that one book, held together with layers of tape.
This shows that Olympiads are one of the most accessible high school activities in the world. If
 you want to be a chess prodigy, a musician, or an elite athlete, you need expensive coaches, and
 parents who will drive you to practice and fly you to competitions around the world. If you want to
 do robotics, you need to go to a high school whose club has a five-figure budget, and if you want to
 do research, you’ll almost always be doing it in a university lab with a multimillion dollar budget.
 But to learn physics, you only need one book and your own mind.
[/quote]
Source: https://knzhou.github.io/handouts/FAQ.pdf[/quote]

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