stats/ecs that helped me get into Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and others! 

Hi! The research club was already pretty established at my school already when I joined, so it already had a good amount of students in the club, as well as officers and an advisor (a teacher that runs the club). So when I joined the club, at the first meeting I was informed of the regional/state/international competitions that I could advance to. It worked as just an after-school club; we would have meetings after school, but most of the research project, including brainstorming, actually experimenting, and creating the various forms of presentation were done outside of school!

Hi! I got my opportunities by cold emailing professors your interest and expertise, and I recommend that if you want to get a more one-on-one, long-lasting experience. If you want to just do research for a single summer, applying through research summer programs and their websites are the way to go. It was definitely an arduous process, it took about months of cold emailing to get just a handful of responses (most of them were nos), but then I met my amazing mentors, so although the process is hard, if you do eventually get an opportunity, it is worthwhile. My sophomore year I played piano, took a college course in the summer and my machine learning research (an opportunity which took me an entire sophomore year spring of emailing to get). Sophomore year was definitely a year to kind of take initiative on what extracurriculars you want, but don't panic if you aren't actually "doing" anything or having any results yet--as long as you are trying it is a productive year :) In terms of SAT, I don't think this advice is as helpful as before because I was the paper SAT rather than digital, but if you find yourself struggling particularly in one subject, I would first allot time to only study that subject for a few weeks. Focus on that until you actually get the material, and then, PRACTICE TESTS. I think I took about 20 practice tests (there's a lot just online). Once you have gotten scores you are satisfied with on a few of them, then you can start just focusing on sections you are struggling on, but make sure you do take the time to take full practice tests.

@@rongxu1626 Thank you so much for the reply, I genuinely appreciate it! It's a relief to hear advice from people who found success in this confusing application process. Honestly, I've been really panicked and lost but hearing your comments make me hopeful. Thank you again, and congratulations! You're awesome. :)

My mentors are research scientists/professors from different institutions that I collaborated with and that helped supervised my research--they were not my school teachers!

@@rongxu1626 Okay thanks I appreciate it

you have time!! there are so many lists out there for science, writing, etc!!

@@janetomoruyi ok 😭😭

@@janetomoruyiwhere do we find those?