Doing research in high school student may seem difficult, but you can do a lot on your own before approaching professors or PhDs to mentor you. Since they’re very busy, the more work you do on your research topic, the easier it is for mentors to help you. Even if you can’t find a mentor, research is still useful in helping you write better college essays. Doing research allows you to develop new ideas on a specific topic, which colleges love to see because it shows your academic potential. Here are 7 steps to writing a research paper as a high school student:
How to do good independent research in high school
Step 1: Pick a topic and conduct a search.
Start with a Google search and then search databases for peer-reviewed journals. You can access free databases online, such as PubMed, ERIC, or Google Scholar. In addition, you may access free databases, such as JSTOR, through your public or school library. For the best university databases, you’ll need to work with professors or graduate students. If you’re having trouble picking a topic, take our quiz to help you find one.
Step 2: Develop research questions and hypotheses.
After reading peer-reviewed journals on your topic, you’ll need to choose the research questions you’d like to examine. What has not been written about yet? Do you have a new way of looking at something? You’ll also need to come up with hypotheses or possible answers to the questions.
Step 3: Choose your data and research design.
Your data may be historical documents or a publicly available dataset. You may even collect your own data through interviews. Depending on your data, you will choose an appropriate research design, such as qualitative, correlational, or experimental.
Step 4: Review the existing literature.
At the beginning of your paper, you’ll present the existing literature on your topic to show what’s already been done and why your topic is important. Then you need to show how your paper makes a new contribution to the field.
Step 5: Conduct the analysis.
Analysis can vary a lot depending on your topic and research design. For example, you may be close reading texts for an English paper, analyzing quantitative data using econometrics for an economics paper, or using a completely different type of statistical analysis in a public health paper. In addition, you may need to learn new skills to conduct the analysis.
Step 6: Write up the paper.
Once you complete the analysis, you’ll need to write up the paper to explain how your results answer the research questions. To help you, you may want to use a published paper on your topic as your guide.
Step 7: Get some feedback and revise your paper.
For feedback, you can look to professors, PhDs, teachers, or parents. The more of an expert the person is in your field, the better the feedback will be. Remember that every published paper goes through the feedback and revision process.
Once you’ve completed your paper, you can now submit to journals or research competitions. If you’d like to get expert mentorship in your research, check out our services and contact us.
How to do good independent research in high school
Dr. Kao is the Principal Adviser at Motivont, specializing in college admissions counseling and research for seniors G12. She has worked with 1000+ students in her 16-year career in education. In addition, she has evaluated applications for the Stanford Undergraduate Admissions Office. Dr. Kao holds a Stanford BA, Columbia MA, and Harvard PhD. For more info, visit motivont.com.