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Secondary school education programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) expose students to several fields to broaden their knowledge and discover their interests. However, most of these programs fail to capture the variety of academic fields available at a traditional university.
While universities may expect prior knowledge for some subjects, they do not usually require background in subjects not commonly offered in secondary school. For example, studying mathematics at the University of Oxford requires an IB student to obtain a score of 7 (maximum) in Higher Level Mathematics. However, a student applying to study law at Oxford does not have required prerequisites.
The lack of exposure to university-level subjects in secondary school limits the level of undergraduates’ expertise, causes students to choose a field before exploring all of their options, and prevents those not attending university from studying certain subjects at all. Below are three subjects within this category, and one way any student can gain exposure.
Undergraduates can explore a particular region with all of its linguistic, political, economic, and historical complexities. Harvard University and other schools offer majors such as East Asian Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Our world is growing increasingly interconnected, making knowledge of global languages and cultures more important. Being bilingual is sometimes a prerequisite for employment, or it can automatically lead to higher pay.
While AP and IB offer courses in language and literature, both curricula lack the options for students to explore a particular region of their choosing in great depth.
The past couple years have seen numerous space-related headlines: successful Mars rover launches, UFO reports, and space tourism. Aerospace engineering focuses on the science, design and production of both spacecraft and aircraft. Graduates work on some of the most cutting-edge and exciting projects related to space exploration. Aerospace Engineering students at schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also do internships at organizations including SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, NASA and Boeing. Unfortunately, many secondary school students are unaware of the variety of engineering disciplines available, including Aerospace Engineering.
Schools such as Columbia University offer Human Rights as a major, and others offer it as a minor. Columbia’s program emphasizes developing “contemporary understandings of justice and equality” and the “ability to assess and respond to emerging technological, economic, social, cultural, and political issues”.
There is an abundance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to ensure that human rights are respected worldwide. NGOs work across many domains including access to nutrition, with a World Bank report estimating that 689 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2017.
An education in human rights prepares graduates to address the largest global challenges in a changing world. Nevertheless, a course in human rights is absent from AP and IB curriculums.
Fortunately, it is possible for anybody to explore these fields, and one great way is through research.
While students may consider reaching out to professors to become a research assistant, they should not rule out conducting their own research in high school. One program revolutionizing access to research is Jinso, an academic network to connect young researchers to mentors.
Through Jinso, individuals anywhere in the world can connect with fellow researchers and mentors. Beyond initiating the research process, Jinso also allows students to peer review each others' papers to provide valuable feedback. Through Jinso, conducting research at the forefront of any academic field will be available to everyone.
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.
Secondary school education programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) expose students to several fields to broaden their knowledge and discover their interests. However, most of these programs fail to capture the variety of academic fields available at a traditional university.
While universities may expect prior knowledge for some subjects, they do not usually require background in subjects not commonly offered in secondary school. For example, studying mathematics at the University of Oxford requires an IB student to obtain a score of 7 (maximum) in Higher Level Mathematics. However, a student applying to study law at Oxford does not have required prerequisites.
The lack of exposure to university-level subjects in secondary school limits the level of undergraduates’ expertise, causes students to choose a field before exploring all of their options, and prevents those not attending university from studying certain subjects at all. Below are three subjects within this category, and one way any student can gain exposure.
Undergraduates can explore a particular region with all of its linguistic, political, economic, and historical complexities. Harvard University and other schools offer majors such as East Asian Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Our world is growing increasingly interconnected, making knowledge of global languages and cultures more important. Being bilingual is sometimes a prerequisite for employment, or it can automatically lead to higher pay.
While AP and IB offer courses in language and literature, both curricula lack the options for students to explore a particular region of their choosing in great depth.
The past couple years have seen numerous space-related headlines: successful Mars rover launches, UFO reports, and space tourism. Aerospace engineering focuses on the science, design and production of both spacecraft and aircraft. Graduates work on some of the most cutting-edge and exciting projects related to space exploration. Aerospace Engineering students at schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also do internships at organizations including SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, NASA and Boeing. Unfortunately, many secondary school students are unaware of the variety of engineering disciplines available, including Aerospace Engineering.
Schools such as Columbia University offer Human Rights as a major, and others offer it as a minor. Columbia’s program emphasizes developing “contemporary understandings of justice and equality” and the “ability to assess and respond to emerging technological, economic, social, cultural, and political issues”.
There is an abundance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to ensure that human rights are respected worldwide. NGOs work across many domains including access to nutrition, with a World Bank report estimating that 689 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2017.
An education in human rights prepares graduates to address the largest global challenges in a changing world. Nevertheless, a course in human rights is absent from AP and IB curriculums.
Fortunately, it is possible for anybody to explore these fields, and one great way is through research.
While students may consider reaching out to professors to become a research assistant, they should not rule out conducting their own research in high school. One program revolutionizing access to research is Jinso, an academic network to connect young researchers to mentors.
Through Jinso, individuals anywhere in the world can connect with fellow researchers and mentors. Beyond initiating the research process, Jinso also allows students to peer review each others' papers to provide valuable feedback. Through Jinso, conducting research at the forefront of any academic field will be available to everyone.
