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Entering the world of research can be difficult, and many academics do not start producing papers until graduate school. Some, however, are already contributing to the research community in high school. Jeremy Ng, a Harvard freshman from the Chicago area, has held several research assistant positions since the summer after his sophomore year of high school.
There are many benefits to being a research assistant in high school. It can be a great way to explore interests not commonly found in curriculums. As his high school’s Entrepreneurship Club’s president, research was one more way Jeremy could explore business. His most recent project focused on changes in CEOs after companies are bought out by private equity firms.
Research is also an effective way to explore what studying different fields in college looks like. Jeremy also spent a summer working in a biology lab. His work allowed him to use university lab equipment, including using microscopy to create videos of dividing embryos of C. elegans worms. “Using some of the more advanced equipment in the lab took some time to learn, but with enough practice [it] was doable,” he shared. With an intended economics concentration and a secondary in biology or computer science at Harvard, Jeremy has found his interests through his research.
Serving as a research assistant can be an effective gateway to completing independent research. Learning proper methodologies and being able to communicate findings effectively is essential to producing quality work. One project on which Jeremy worked involved interviewing venture capitalists and co-authoring a venture capital case study which is now taught in an Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity class at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Becoming a research assistant builds skills that can bring real value to a project. The ability to read and summarize reports may be the minimum skill level to land a position in high school, but taking the initiative to learn new skills can increase one’s value. Being able to write code and perform data analysis is especially beneficial.
Jeremy has done data analysis using tools like Excel and Stata. Analyzing data in research is complicated and involves collecting, processing, and communicating results. “I had to gather data and analyze it myself from scratch, which meant [asking] my own questions about what data we should gather and how to analyze it,” he explained.
Some high school students may have access to computer science courses, but online coursework to learn programming is widely available on platforms such as EdX. For analyzing and displaying data, programming languages like Python, R, and Stata are good options.
Finding research assistant positions in high school is not easy, but Jinso - an academic network - can help. Jinso users share their interests and are connected to researchers in the same field. Jinso helps students who are looking to complete independent research by connecting them to research mentors and helping with publication. Jinso enables more students to take the initiative to create and explore research.
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
Entering the world of research can be difficult, and many academics do not start producing papers until graduate school. Some, however, are already contributing to the research community in high school. Jeremy Ng, a Harvard freshman from the Chicago area, has held several research assistant positions since the summer after his sophomore year of high school.
There are many benefits to being a research assistant in high school. It can be a great way to explore interests not commonly found in curriculums. As his high school’s Entrepreneurship Club’s president, research was one more way Jeremy could explore business. His most recent project focused on changes in CEOs after companies are bought out by private equity firms.
Research is also an effective way to explore what studying different fields in college looks like. Jeremy also spent a summer working in a biology lab. His work allowed him to use university lab equipment, including using microscopy to create videos of dividing embryos of C. elegans worms. “Using some of the more advanced equipment in the lab took some time to learn, but with enough practice [it] was doable,” he shared. With an intended economics concentration and a secondary in biology or computer science at Harvard, Jeremy has found his interests through his research.
Serving as a research assistant can be an effective gateway to completing independent research. Learning proper methodologies and being able to communicate findings effectively is essential to producing quality work. One project on which Jeremy worked involved interviewing venture capitalists and co-authoring a venture capital case study which is now taught in an Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity class at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Becoming a research assistant builds skills that can bring real value to a project. The ability to read and summarize reports may be the minimum skill level to land a position in high school, but taking the initiative to learn new skills can increase one’s value. Being able to write code and perform data analysis is especially beneficial.
Jeremy has done data analysis using tools like Excel and Stata. Analyzing data in research is complicated and involves collecting, processing, and communicating results. “I had to gather data and analyze it myself from scratch, which meant [asking] my own questions about what data we should gather and how to analyze it,” he explained.
Some high school students may have access to computer science courses, but online coursework to learn programming is widely available on platforms such as EdX. For analyzing and displaying data, programming languages like Python, R, and Stata are good options.
Finding research assistant positions in high school is not easy, but Jinso - an academic network - can help. Jinso users share their interests and are connected to researchers in the same field. Jinso helps students who are looking to complete independent research by connecting them to research mentors and helping with publication. Jinso enables more students to take the initiative to create and explore research.
