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## Intro....Why Research is Trending in College Admissions [00:00] What's up everyone? Coach Tony here. In this training, we're going to do a special collaboration, special training on how to do research in high school. So, if it's a very first timing, this is a special collab event between two incredible groups, uh, Eagle Lock, College, and Lumier Research as well, too. So, I'll be one of the co-presenters. My name is Coach Tony. I'm actually a former UC Berkeley admissions reader and our team has worked with thousands of students over the last 16 years to get them literally everywhere. You top UC's, top privates, top tier colleges, MIT, Caltech and everything in between as well. So today we're going to do a quick little uh I'll share a little bit of why you want might want to consider research as part of your journey. And for those who did do research or will do research, uh I'll teach you guys how to share it on your application. That's only one half, right? The main event of this presentation, we invite our very awesome friends over over Lumiere. I'm going to let Maya introduce herself. Hi everybody. I'm Maya. I am just finishing up my PhD at Northwestern. So hopefully I can speak to the nature of research uh because of that. And I also am the head of growth and partnerships with Lumiere, which is one option for a research organization. um not the only option which I'll tell you about but I've been with Lumiere for five years. I started as a mentor there working with some of our amazing high school students on research projects. Um it's been a great great experience. So I'm really excited to talk about how to do research, why to do research, and options for high schoolers to get involved. Thanks Tony. Awesome. So we are going live on a few platforms and you may be watching the recording of this. So, if you are here live or watching the recording down below in the chat, go ahead and drop your grade. We always love to see kind of where everyone's at so we can kind of for those who are here live, we can kind of cater this presentation a little bit more to those. Uh, as well as always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop it in the Q&A or chat. We'll save it to the very end and stick around, do a little bit of Q&A if there's any questions. Uh, if you're watching this live, the replay and the notes that we'll have will be available within 48 hours. Uh, so stick around and you can grab that as well, too. Okay, so first off, first off, why or should you even consider research? This is one of those words you hear a lot uh especially in the high school realm uh here. And then basically this week I I went online, right? Google the word research, high school research. And you see posts like this all the time, right? You see posts of parents like, "Hey, I need a research ## The Biggest Mistake Families Make About Research [02:30] program. I need a research program as well." And it's one of those buzzwords you hear a lot in the high school admission space as well, too. Right. However, right, even these students again, especially if you're watching this live, we're recording this live in the month of April. By now, a lot of our students have gone in. But if you look at the public, a lot of these forums, a lot of angry people, right? That my kid did this. My kid did all did all this stuff and still didn't get into these schools. So, why is that the case, right? Because again, people, I think, are thinking, "All right, do research. I am good to go." That's not exactly the full truth here because it's not what you do. It's going to be the why you chose to do research itself. Right? this not apply not only to research but a lot of your other activities today and today again you know the kumaya is going to help break down this for you guys can understand this uh is it a right fit for your child if this is something you guys are interested in doing right keep in mind I don't think every single student needs this right so again part of the presentation like is you is it right for your child as well too and if it is right right if it is for some of you it's probably one of the best ways to explain your passion your interest your skills as well too again. So, this is not a one-stop shop. Get it and you're good. This is, hey, is this going to be a good fit for my child? Is this going to help showcase who they are and their skills and their assets as well too, right? So, again, we invited one of the best our our partners uh and we're going to let her uh let Maya go in and talk about uh research as a whole for you guys and I'll I'll come at the very end and help you guys once you do this. Once you get in either again I think click m give you options right how to do as well too you do it with uh yourself with with them with anyone else I'll teach you guys how to showcase that on your college apps itself too right without further ado if you guys are ready go ahead and drop a quick yes in the chat if you're ready to get started drop a quick yes so we know the chat is working uh is number one and we we have permission to continue on uh for you guys all see lots of yeses coming through fantastic fantastic without further Maya, I think you're up. Great. Thank you so much for uh having me. So, I'm just going to uh go into my first slide. So, thanks everyone. I already introduced myself. I'm really excited to share about research opportunities in high school. Now, just to give some information about me, I did not know that research was an opportunity in high school. Now that I've seen so many amazing high schoolers go through the process, I wish I had known. I remember getting onto my college campus. I went to UC Santa Cruz and being asked to do research for the first time in my life. I totally had to start from scratch and figure it all out. So, I think that um this is something I'm really passionate about for that reason. Uh first, I want to just share like I said that I'm at Northwestern. It has been an amazing six years of research as well as working with 12 different high schoolers on their research projects. Um, and so I hope coming from this angle as a researcher myself, as someone that's worked with high schoolers um, in research, I can uh, share from that perspective and just shed some light on how one can go about accessing this. So, I think research can like mean a lot of different things and sometimes people use that word without clarifying. I like to start this type of presentation with just explaining like what research is, ## What Research Actually Means for High School Students [06:00] obviously there's so many defi different definitions, but when I'm talking about high schoolers getting access to research opportunities, I mean this this is the process that I mean so first is just to identify something confusing or interesting. Sometimes people get in their heads and think it has to be a super academic sounding thing, but really I encourage everyone to just like look around you and think about parts of the world that interest you. So, you know, when I look around, I have lots of different plants around my room. Those really interest me. I look around. I have two cats. I'm really curious like when I introduce them, they fought a lot. That's something that really interests me. Those are different like things that interest me. And when I've worked with high school students, I've seen the same. So we've seen students do incredible research projects on video games. Students who are really passionate about video games spend a lot of time doing that. They've been able to turn that into a research project, right? That's something that genuinely interests or confuses them. So that is really the first step. Look around you. See what interests you. Next, find out what we already know about it. So we have been researching for all of human history, right? Anyone that has ever been on this planet has done their own version of research. And now with the remarkable strides we've made in technology, there is even more research out there. And the first step to doing your own project is figuring out what we already know about it. So that I mean it can be useful and valuable to repeat things that people have already done and see their process, but we want to at least know and acknowledge that we know that research is already out there. We want to build upon research that already exists. Um, so this is the next step. If I'm really interested in video games and I'm really interested in doing a research project on uh let's say the Sims, right? That's the only video game I play. I would find out all that's already been written about The Sims and I can promise you that there's been a lot every single topic already a lot of research on there. Um the next step is I would do my own analysis to develop my argument. So let's say that I've done a speed dive through every single piece of research that's already out there. I would then do my own analysis by trying to figure out something new about it. Um, I am in the social sciences, so my students do a lot of interviews. So, um, survey data, case studies. If you're in the hard sciences, that's going to look very different. Um, but really trying to develop my own argument um, based on based on the analysis of data at hand. And then lastly, right, or kind of what we think of as the most important part because it involves the most like material concrete thing is writing your own research paper and getting it out into the world. So really writing about those three steps that we already identified and then putting it out into the world. Whether that be through oops, whether that be through publication like I already talked about or sorry like I'm going to talk about or just posting it on your blog or getting on a podcast. Those are all ways to get out into the world. There are so many different uh fields ## Three Types of Research You Can Start in High School [09:00] and ways to do research in that field. A lot of people think that research involves being in a lab every single time in a lab coat using really expensive fancy tools. That is one amazing way to do research, lab- based research, but it is by no means the only way. So there is also quantitative research. This is very popular in my field of political science, but also economics, business, right? using tools to analyze your data, predict trends, make calculations. Um, I spent a lot of time using a statistical program called R when I was in graduate school. And so those options are available to students as well. Qualitative research, right? So this is what we might think of as interviews, case studies, observational data, another amazing, very important form of data that students are also able to do. And then lastly, we have a literature review. So some students don't think about this as research, but it totally is. It involves looking at what other people have written and writing up your own meaningful analysis of what's already out there. you're contributing something new because you are taking what's all been written and synthesizing it into a new novel argument. Um, and that is available in all fields. Okay. Why should a high schooler consider doing research? So, coach Tony is going to talk about that a lot, but I want to share um some specific um pieces of my opinion. So first yes it is uh very important for college admissions for some students but I also think there is so many other amazing aspects to research. So demonstrating an interest in the world around you helping to make the world a better place. I cannot think of like anything more meaningful than that. So that is one reason right that you might want to take on doing research really as an intellectual pursuit but also as a pursuit of just leaving the world a little bit better than you found it. We've also found that according to the world economic form skills that research um develops in students are seen as the top 10 skills of 2025. Right? So like analytical thinking, active learning, creativity, reasoning, learning technology, flexibility, those are all skills that are developed through research. So it really, I think, makes you a more well-rounded, developed person. And then lastly, of course, research helps you build a profile. So you show academic excellence in résumés, interviews, college applications. Of course, um I have personally as a mentor written many letters of recommendation for students. So that's another option if you decide to do research by working with a mentor. Um that relationship is hopefully like valuable and lifelong to you and can also help your college applications with the letter of wreck. And then you're also just demonstrating ## How to Reach Out to Professors the Right Way [12:00] university readiness. So much of what you end up doing in college involves research. And so showing that you know what that means, what that undertaking involves, I think is really valuable. This is a lot of text. I won't read it all, but basically what it says is that the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania said that nearly one-third of admitted students engaged in academic research during high school. And then there's some other quotes from admissions officers who are essentially just saying that when they see research on college applications, that is valuable to them as admissions officers. that is a signal that this student um has some level of skills in certain areas. So again, it is not something every student has to do. We do talk with admissions officers over at Lumiere though and have found that many do find that a valuable indicator of a student's skills and that many incoming students to elite universities are doing research. Okay, how can someone do research in high school? Right? And I've talked about its benefits. I've talked about how cool it is, but how to actually do it. So, the great news for everybody listening in is that there's actually a lot of different ways and there are a lot of ways that you can do it that are accessible as well. You don't need to live next to a university. You don't need to have parents that are professors. You don't need to have access to a lab. If you have any of those things, those are amazing, but you don't necessarily need them to do research. Few different ways you can do a structured research program. These are programs like MIT RSI primes, Lumiere, lots of programs that offer structure, connect you to mentors and take you through the ROS re uh the research process. You can do research assistance work. This looks like finding the opportunities on your own. Lots of high school students will reach out to professors to try and get these opportunities for themselves. We'll talk a little bit about how to go about doing that if you're interested in a minute. And then lastly, and don't undervalue this, there is individual independent research where you actually go about doing a research project without a mentor on your own, without a structured program. Now, this can be most difficult for some students of the three options because it's all self-motivated and self-timed. But I have seen students do this. I have seen students even publish with selfwritten research. So that is something else to keep in mind. All right. So like I said, these are some examples of structured research programs. I will talk specifically about Lumiere in a little bit. Um Vanderbilt programs for talented youth is a great one. If you are interested in doing a structured research program, there are tons of articles online that list all of them and the pros and the cons. So do your own research. Um today I'll tell you a little bit about Lumiere at the end. Okay, research assistant work. So, this is often what I get the most questions about is, hey, I want to reach out to a professor at my local university and I want to be a research assistant to them. Many students have this desire. I have to say that it's very competitive. I like to say this at the beginning. Just so you know, if you've already tried to do this without that much success, it is not you. It is a very competitive industry. If you do want to try doing this though, I will share how to go about that. So, one of the main things you have to do is you have to reach out to a lot of professors. You have to reach out to a lot because think about where a high school student might land on a professor's list of who they need to place in their labs. So, the first uh people that professors need to put in their labs are graduate students. And then below that is undergrads. And then below that, if they have any room for someone to do their grunt work, right, it's high schoolers. But it's not to say that high schoolers don't get placed in labs. It's just that you have to do a significant amount of research in order to make this happen. Usually what I recommend students do is they get a list of anywhere from like 50 to 100 professors that they could see themselves working with and they reach out to all of them. Um so this uh this shows just like reaching out, finding professors. Um, you can Google professors at the university near you. If you're surrounded by universities, maybe this is a little bit easier. Um, if you are in the hard sciences, most professors will want you to come into their lab. If you're in the social sciences, you can you are more likely to find virtual opportunities. Um, and then you reach out to all of them. So, this is called cold outreach, right? We do it all the time in sales. you've never necessarily uh talked to these people, but you are making the case that they should read your email and get back to you. So, this is just an example of an email, right? What I like about this example of an email is you are spending ## Independent Research Timeline and Tools [17:00] a little bit of time telling the professor about yourself and what skills you can bring, right? So, you're just giving them this pitch of why you want to work with them in this email. The other really important thing to do is follow up. If the likelihood that someone responds to your first email is probably low, they might see it and forget. So, you want to follow up as well and bump them. So, this is the way that I would recommend reaching out to professors at your local universities and asking them to do um a research assistant job with them. The thing to remember um the thing to remember about that is that you will be doing whatever the professor is working on, right? So, if the professor has a lab in biomedical science and they're working on a very specific project, you will likely be doing the grunt work for that project. Um, you will likely be doing the things that the undergraduates and um, PhD candidates don't want to do. The great part about these types of programs is if you get in, you are now working for an established lab and they're usually free, sometimes even paid, but that's pretty rare. Um but a lot of other research opportunities you have to pay for. So this type of opportunity um is usually free if you're able to get a professor to respond. Okay. The next type is individual independent research. So like I said, you should not undervalue this. Um but this is when someone actually goes ahead and does research on their own. Um if you're in an AP seminar um or the research uh capstone, you might have experience with this. Um, really what it takes is that whole process I showed you before, finding something you're curious about, getting creative, reading everything that's out there, doing your own analysis, putting it into place. You do that on your own. If you have mentors in your life that are willing to help with you, provide you some structure, that's great. Um, otherwise it's really important to set a timetable with yourself to really figure out what it is that you want to do and then give yourself actionable goals every single week. So at the end of this week, I'll have my proposal done. At the end of this week, I'll have my literature review done. At the end of this week, etc., etc. Um, so it I would say this is probably the most difficult option and that it requires a lot of your own structure and your own research, but I would also say that in our modern world with the tools we have available to us, it's gotten easier over time, right? So I have toyed around with the deep research option on chatbt. Um, it's definitely still in progress, but I've found that it's really great at helping find places for me to start looking, like developing a list of readings that I can then go into and look at myself, showing giving me ideas for like pathways to go down. So, I think those tools that weren't around just a couple of years ago are helpful ## How to Write an Activity Description That Stands Out [20:00] to um sort of allowing more people to have access to these opportunities. Provides the most flexibility. Of course, it's free, right? You're doing it on your own. Um, so that's something else to think about. Okay. So I want to talk now about how students have done research with Lumiere, but I also want to say that in the rest of this presentation, I hope to show you many examples of projects that students have done to give you ideas about what research you might end up doing, right? Um I think the more kind of like project ideas you look at, the more papers you read that other students have done, the better. So hopefully um you will see some of that in these next slides. Okay. So, Lumiere is a one-on-one research program where we pair high school students and sometimes younger, but mostly high school students with PhD candidates and they conduct a research program together and the student writes their own independent research project. So, the mentor serves as the adviser, right? We've talked about mentorship. The mentor will really advise you. But unlike a situation where you're working in a professor's lab, it is focused on the students research ideas and interests. So you can come in and say, "Hey, I've been playing a lot of the Sims, right? I really want to do a research project in the Sims." And even if the mentor's research project is actually in Fortnite, right, or is in something different, they will totally help you and guide you on your um Sims research project because that is their job as a mentor with Lumiere. These are just some numbers from the 2021 2022 school year. So you have an idea. So we work with students literally all over the world. That's one of my favorite parts of um working at Lumiere. We are fully virtual like I said. So we work by Zoom and by email. So students who are in rural places in the US and students who are in countries where their mentor is not, all of our mentors are from the US are absolutely able to do this program. We also offer a significant amount of financial aid. So I've talked about sort of the opportunities that are paid and the opportunities that are not. Structured research programs, like I said, are usually paid programs, but we offer a lot of financial aid as well to try and really provide access to everybody. We are applicationbased. So, the first step is students fill out an application online. Um, the next step is they do an interview. The next step is we send them who we think the best mentor match is. And then if you agree on the mentor match, you start the program. Just a word on this. Um, I actually think this process in and of itself is valuable. I remember I did very few interviews before I finally was out on the job market. I took a year off between uh college and graduate school and I hadn't really done interviews before. So, I think even the process of filling out an application and doing interviews like this that are relatively low stakes um is really valuable. Just something to think about. And little unsolicited advice from me is try to do as many interviews as you can um in your time before entering entering the job market. Um so we do have an application, we do have an interview because we want to see what your research interests are. We want to see who would be the best possible mentor for you. But I also think it's good experience. This is what the program actually looks like. And if you are interested in doing your own independent research project by yourself without Lumiere, take note of this as well because this might be a way to think about how to structure it. So in week one, you meet with a mentor in a line on a topic for you in an independent research program. Maybe you spend some time, maybe you give yourself a week to really narrow down um what it is that you want to do. In weeks two through four, you explore the topic and identify research question, a research question. So, at this point, right, if I'm a mentor to a student, I'm giving them different readings to do and asking them to identify what in the readings is interesting to them. Maybe if you're doing a program by yourself, you think about doing this, too. You give yourself two or three weeks to read everything out there that you can possibly find and manage on your topic. And then use what you like to help narrow down a research question. Look at what other people's research questions are, model it off of that. In weeks 5 through nine, that is when the writing of the research paper and the data analysis happens. So at Lumiere, we like to do this simultaneously. This is something I kind of recommend even if you're doing a research project on your uh by yourself, is that you shouldn't think about it in like I'm going to do all of this research, right? I'm going to collect all my own data for five weeks and then I'm going to write up all the results for five weeks. I always recommend writing as you're going, right? Right? ## How to Turn Your Research into a Compelling Essay [25:00] In the beginning when you're reading everything there is to read, you should be taking notes and that becomes the literature review portion of your research. Right? As you're doing this analysis, let's say you're doing interviews, right? As you're doing your interviews, you should be taking notes and like writing up things that are interesting to you and writing up your findings. And then ideally, when it comes time when you've done all your data analysis and it comes time to put everything together, you already have like significant chunks written. And of course you need to edit it and weave it all in, but the goal is really that you're setting yourself up for success at the end. Um, then you make final edits and submit paper for final evaluation if you're in the Lumiere Research Scholar program. After that, we have a graduation ceremony and if you decide that you want to publish your paper, you move on to a publication phase. Um, so uh, publication is really important. I will talk about that in a moment. Um, not everyone has to do it, but a lot of our students do want to do it. But before I do that, I just want to put up some areas of research that are very popular. This is by no means the only research areas you can do. But if you are sitting here thinking like, I have no idea what I would do research in, take a look at our most popular areas in STEM and in the humanities and social sciences to get some ideas. So I will tell you that in the last year we have seen more students than ever before who are interested in computer science and AI and robotics. And I will also tell you that in the 5 years I've been a mentor with Lumiere, those have always been the most popular programs. So that is not changing. But I will say we've seen even more of a spike and particularly in AI that tends to be really popular. PMED though, math, architecture, chemistry, those are all really popular. STEM topics in humanities and social sciences, business, econ, psychology, always our most popular. Um, but we also have students doing things like classics and history and environmental studies and gender studies. Um, if your interest is not in this list, totally fine. But again, if you have no idea what you would do research on, just pick something from this list that interests you. Um, like I said, I'm going to put this um, contact info up here, but I just before I pass it over want to talk a little bit about publishing and what that means. So, um, when I say publish it, when I say students publish their research, I do not mean that our students submit their research to like the same journals that professors at universities submit to. We generally don't recommend that. Students are welcome to submit there, right? there is no like rules against anyone can submit their research to any journal but as a as a graduate student you know even my professors get rejected from those um professional journals and so it's just usually not worth it we don't recommend it what I say when I mean um publication is that we want students if they want to to submit their work to outlets where it can get seen by others so very formal versions of that would be journals that are set up b for and by students or journals that are set up out of universities. So Stanford, Colia, um Cornell, they all have journals out of their universities that high school students can submit to. Now, you are also competing against college students, right? Because it's college journals, but we have had students at Lumiere get published in those journals. Um, less competitive journals that are still formal peer-reviewed journals would be things like the Journal of Student Research, the Journal of Emerging Investigators. Um, there's one that has a long acronym I never reme remember. It's like the National Journal of High School Science Research, something like that. Just if you're curious, just Google like top 10 journals for high school students to submit to. Um, but those would be ones that are they look great, right? you're showcasing your work, but they are less competitive than say Stanford's Journal of Science and Technology. And then an sort of step below that informality would be submitting to things like blogs run by high school students that are interested in the same areas of research that you are or creating your own blog and publishing work on there. or we've had a couple students get on podcasts and I thought that was such an interesting way to showcase your work. So, um that is another option and it doesn't matter what kind of research program you do. If you do the structured research program, if you do a program by yourself, if you do your own research, I would recommend putting it out there um first. That gives you a good way to sort of summarize it in your applications. um even if you do something less formal by saying I wrote this research paper and I put it on my blog and my blog gets 600 views a month maybe it won't so don't say that if it doesn't but you know some sort of metric um that that is easily grabbed onto ## Pro Tips for Publishing and Sharing Your Work [30:00] another reason for that is I think there is so much value in having people that are not your family members that are not your teachers read your work and provide feedback. So when you submit to any of the journals, even if you're not accepted, someone out there will have read your work and will have given you feedback on it. If you are accepted, even better, right? But I think that is so valuable as well is getting used to people giving you feedback, getting used to people reading your work. Um even if you submit to a blog that's run by other high school students, they will read your work, right? That's how they decide whether or not to accept you. So that's the last bit I will say um about publication. So here's our contact info if you want to learn more about Lumiere. If you just have more questions about doing high school research more generally um you can also email the contact at Lumiere and they'll put you in touch with the right person. Thank you guys so much for listening and I'll pass it back to to Coach Tony to talk more. Oh, you're muted. You're muted. I always do that. So, apologies as well, too. So, yeah, Maya's not going away yet. She will stick around for the Q&A in a little bit. We had a few questions come in, but now that you guys learn how to do it, right? And then for those who want to pursue, right, we have some of our students working with them as well, too. So, they're awesome. You'll hear nothing but awesome things there. How do I showcase this, right? I think and also I think M little spoilers uh as well to to what we're going to do, right? Here's where you showcase this because when you can you do it, you did the hard work, but there students who don't get in. Still, it's not because they didn't do it well or didn't do a good one. It's because they don't know how to talk about what they did in the apps themselves. So, here's kind of there's kind of two big areas where you can showcase this specifically. Number one is going to be in your activities list, right? So, when it comes to activities, it's something that you share that you have done as well too. And then a lot of students just don't know how to write this section. a lot of students that we've read that like they didn't get in a lot of the public especially this month a lot of fans was like they're very frustrated I'm like show me your app I'm I'm curious to see why because statwise you sound great so I was like let me see what is I was like oh once you open the app you see where it is so here right when it comes to the activities list how you explain it is huge that's the big thing I call the blurb the blurb is a thing there too so when it comes to here the the structure you want to do is verb context with metrics that was the big Maya shared as well too was the specific metrics that you did. So here you want to share what you did, not just the topic. People talk about I did professor so and so with this fancy long title, right? As well too, Joe, what you did. Quantify as much as you can, right? Numbers always think like metrics because if you told me, hey, I want like here's example, right? Because I think we're on the the video games and stuff for that as well too. There's there's a game some of you guys have played Valerant, right? Valerant as well too. And then it's like a it's like a anime kind of shooting game. And then I was talking to a student. I was like, "Oh, so what do you do? Are you good?" He's like, "I think so." I was like, "Oh, what rank are you?" He's like, "Oh, I'm radiant, rank." And if I told you guys right now, unless you played valor, you have no clue what that means. What? I don't know what valant radiant is. And you said, "Oh, cool. You write radians." And I was like, "Hm, let's put some metrics behind it. How many Radiant players are there? Oh, there's like a thousand." I'm like, "Oh, so you're one of a thousand. Okay, that's that's okay, right? That's that's not a bad pretty good." And I was like, "How many people play the whole game total?" you find out that radiant is the top 1% of the world and now you're like oh big context there so metric is huge when it comes to here again you want to keep it short as well so is it okay if I give you guys some examples drop a yes in the chat it's okay I give you some examples of what these will look like if not we can skip it right permission fast if it's okay I can show you guys some examples of what this blurb should look like go ahead and drop a quick yes in the chat we have only one yes I'm assuming One person wants to see it. Everyone else is. Okay, there you go. There you go. People are people are excited now. All right, so here's a few examples of them, right? So, I'm just going to run through them really quick. Uh, so, uh, here's our some of them. By the way, I I I sneaked in some real ones and some some fun ones I made up so you see see you guys can figure out which one's which. Right. This one's about an AI one. Research ethical implications of AI bias in facial recognition. analyzed 100 plus studies ran survey of 250 peers published in the Gen Z science journal right metrics there next one is a cancer immun immunotherapy project assisted PhD mentor in cancer imunotherapy lab analyze protein markers from 50 patient samp patient samples using eisa co-authored conference abstract they didn't put their professor's name because there's no room these things are so small that you don't have to you can put in in Please show comments if you want but again in here it's short little blurbs as well right this one's a one for economics led independent study on economic impact of fast fashion collected price labor data from 30 brands wrote a 20page re research paper submitted to conquered review next one desire water filter using activated c activated charcoal and sand conducted 40 tests on turbidity and bacteria prototype reduce contaminants by 92% and again I'm not skim there's a lot there's a lot a lot of fancy words as well too, right? So, here's one. Here's one in memory. If you guys want to screenshot that is number one. Here's another one, a literature literature review as well too. Boom. And you guys seen this trend, right? It starts with a verb. There's some metrics. You can understand the context of this. Here's a sociology one uh as well too. They interviewed business owners on the effect there. This one about environmental case study screenshot here as well too. Right? So, that's the first part is your activity. You're going to showcase what you do. Right? It's the part one. The other one is if you could share it in your essay. Does it mean you have to do it for your essays? No. Right. Activities, yes, you should put it on your activities list no matter what. Uh for the common app, if it's if you have 10 things that are more cooler than that, then share the other 10 things. But again, for most students, this is probably the cool things you want you want to share on your activity list for the common app. But when it comes to essays, it may be your topic because keep in mind for the if you're applying to a private school, they use the common app. One big personal statement. Is there something else that's bigger for you? uh or not, right? If it is, if it's not, then feel free to use the structure there. So, the structure we usually tell our students to keep in mind is the 37y old rule, right? So, what people tend to do, so the mistake I see a lot is it tell a big story about their lab, their professor, how awesome the professor is, uh what they did, what each of the the the the chemicals do and everything that happened, what they plugged in at the end. I love science, right? So too. So at the end that's a big story, right? And then so I always think how many other people could do the same thing. Spoilers a lot. A lot of people do. That's why again going back to what Maya, right? What are you interested in? She didn't say what should we do? That's like hey what's the what's the hot topic? What do you want? She keeps referring to what are your interests? And that's the big key here is you aka the student not the parent by the way. Right? Parents you can like one thing but your kid like something else. Focus on the student's interest because the reason why we say that is there's the why. There is a reason why the student likes that thing and that why reason is unique only to them. Right? So the what could be the same. Again you're doing research but in theory someone else could do the same research but the impact of doing that research for you is unique only to you. Right? And then I mentioned here there's three words there three kind of questions you want to ask yourself for each one. Number one is why. Why did you do what you did? Right? Spoilers, right? A lot of students, right, didn't go through this little presentation and they didn't do it correctly. They're doing because it looks good for college. That that is their reason why they're doing that. Right? When it comes to that reason, you don't really have a why or your why is there is I look good for college, right? But again, keep in mind what Maya kept saying, right? What does the student want? What keeps you up at night, right? What what bugs you there? Boom. There's your why. That's unique only to you. Number part two is how how has this made you who you are today? the process of the research. Again, some students again, you don't have to get published, right? She mentioned that was actually one of the questions, but hey, you don't have to get published. It's the journey of doing this, the journey of discovery. That's the how. How made you who you are. Number three is who have you become as a result of all this. These three questions tell me only about the student, not about the thing. So, the structure here is going to be the 30 and 70, right? 30% is the what, 70% is the why uh as well. And if you're like, I'm stuck. I don't know how to explain this or talk about it. Here's some guiding question. Here's a good like screenshot kind of slide as well too. I'd ask the student, hey, why did this topic matter to you currently? Because again, a lot of students do a lot of random things. I'm like, oh, why'd you do that? Uh, science, right? And I was like, no, no, no, no. There's that that that's tell me about you, right? The focus should be on you. Number two, when did you notice this issue, right? This problem, this idea. Again, going back to what everything Maya said earlier for us, right? Exactly. What what do you want? What keeps you up? What do you look around? What do you see as personal to you? Right. Number three, what are the challenges? What the breakthroughs you had, right? Number four, what what did how did your thinking change as a result of that project? Number five, how did experience teach you about yourself? When did we ever ask you what project did you do? Right? No. Right. At the end of the day, it's all about the student. And that's the big key when it comes to writing this on your essays is your focus on you. Again, your project should be like a reflection, right? A natural reflection of what you're doing, your interest. But this is all about the student. And that's the big key over here. Keep in mind, and one other thing, one little tip, especially those who are doing like sciency kind of research, right? You use too many fancy words, right? The people who are reading your fancy words is people like me who cannot pronounce fancy words, right? So if we can't pronounce it, again, scientists not reading your prompts, right? You're not grad students like Maya, right? We affect us, we're normal people. We want to know, we don't understand enough. If you make me sound silly, that doesn't usually end well for the student as well, too. So, keep in mind, do not talk about the sciency words, the jargon, right? You want to focus on you, the student, your growth, your motivation, and your self-awareness. Okay, with that being said, we're going to open up to some Q&A. We have a few minutes in case you guys have questions. But before we do, we have two special things for you guys. Number one, for those who are new uh for the to the on the coaching side, if you guys are interested, we give all new members a free 15-minute coaching call just to kind of point you guys in the right direction. Uh is all of you guys are interested in that, go ahead, text us at 7 949-7750865. And then uh uh I know Lamir has a few free gifts for you guys as well, too. If you guys want to text us research, uh we'll send you guys some free gifts from them um as well. Okay, so as you guys are doing that, we have a few questions. I think uh Maya they're probably better for you than for me as well too. Can someone uh someone asked uh about uh the email structure? Is there a fast way to to send a lot of emails? So can you comment on that like email? I absolutely can. There's so many different tools to use. A tool that I use a lot is called Mixmax. So if you uh just Google Mixmax, it will come up. And what it allows you to do is send out a lot of emails at once, personalized um and then allows you to send follow-ups um when someone doesn't respond. All I'll say about that is just make sure your email is really good quality. Be really careful with those tools because kind of the worst thing you could do in this situation is annoy someone or bother someone. But if you send just like a heartfelt email um talking about yourself, you absolutely won't. So that's the tool I use. Awesome. Fantastic. Um, and I I think you kind of answered this earlier as well too, like but the question is do you have to get published if you if you No, not at all. I think um hopefully there isn't a a misconception that you do. What I've seen is that really it's like the students passion and ability to translate that passion for the research into their applications that is useful. Publication is cool. It gives you a succinct way to talk about it. Um but I have had you know my own students who didn't publish but were really passionate about what they did were able to translate that into their um applications and are now at like some amazing schools. So I really think it's the research that is important um and the publishing I think is one way to talk about the research or um is great for you to go through that process and learn how to how to publish get feedback on your work but I don't think it's necessary. Love it. Awesome. And also try from a college admissions point of view, there's no checklist, right? So it's not like a checklist item of like, oh look, research, you're in. That's not how admission works. Uh as well, it's just another piece of the puzzle, right? Another piece of the puzzle. If you have it, that's awesome. If you don't have it, we're not looking for it per se also, right? So I think it's one of those again, just like Maya mentioned, it's the research itself and kind of showcasing who you are. That's the big thing there. Yeah. Well, I think that's pretty much it. So ma, do you have any closing words for us before we wrap up this session here? Um, I just want to say that the fact that you are on this call, whoever you are, is like evidence that you are doing the work to learn everything there is to learn and put yourself in a great position and that already puts you leagues ahead. So my hope is that nobody feels more stressed. people feel more, you know, armed with information. Um, and then make the choices that you think are best and research will will be here for you at Lumiere if that's the pathway you decide to go down. Awesome. Thank you everyone for joining and I'll see you guys on the next training. Bye.