Doing real academic research is not easy—but it’s worth it, especially if you’re a high school student looking to distinguish yourself as an applicant in the Great Admissions Race.
By doing research, what we mean is not just “looking things up on Google.” Doing research is a matter of exploring a particular established area of academic study critically, creatively, and to a deep extent, independently. Research is a matter not just of inheriting knowledge but moving it forward—a matter, as Newton famously put it, of standing on top of the shoulders of giants. This means that research takes time, effort, intellectual ingenuity, and above all, a genuine passion for learning and knowledge.
This means that a student capable of pursuing and completing a research project must not only be an intelligent student. She must also be a mature, independent, and passionate student. These are all qualities that admissions officers are looking for—and doing research provides an opportunity for students to showcase these qualities to admissions officers in a concrete and powerful manner.
That’s, however, just one of the more utilitarian reasons for doing research. These reasons are important, but we shouldn’t mistake them for being the most important reasons. While research takes effort, at the end of the day, it should still be something exciting and fun. And at CCIR, this is precisely the kind of experience we aspire to design.
At CCIR, you’ll learn directly from lecturers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in small group settings. Together, you’ll be exploring some of the most exciting and engaging topics available in academia today. Under your mentor’s wing, you’ll learn how to design and conduct independent research, and you’ll dive deep into a question that you truly care about. In the process, you’ll learn all sorts of things you did not before, and you’ll develop a whole battery of critical thinking, research, and discipline-specific skills. But most importantly of all, if we’re at all successful in what we were trying to do, you’ll walk away from this experience with a hunger to learn more about the world.
And this last point is what is most important. Because, above all, pursuing an academic research project is just this: an intrinsically valuable opportunity for genuine intellectual and personal growth—something rewarding, in and of itself.
Interested in undertaking a summer research program as a high school student? Register yourself here & we'll email you the brochure! You are also eligible for a 5% discount on program fees if you sign up through Writers Qi!
Written by our partner: Cambridge Center for International Research