Can high school students join the lab?

We receive numerous requests by high school students who would like to join the lab or otherwise gain some research experience. In general, we decline all such requests. There are several reasons. First, we simply receive way too many requests, roughly one or two a week. Therefore, even disregarding any other issues, we would have to decline over 95% of applicants. Even in a best-case scenario we could not host more than one or two high school students a year.

Second, if we were to host a high school student, it would be almost exclusively for the benefit of the student. The requests we receive often contain language along the lines of “I would be excited to help out in the lab in any way I can, including data analysis, software development, or literature review.” But realistically the work we do is too technically challenging for high school students to be able to help. Any high school student in the lab would require extensive one-on-one coaching. This statement remains true even for highly gifted and extremely smart students. Even graduate students need extensive coaching during their first 1–2 years in the lab, before they become independently productive.

Third, because high school students are underage and not enrolled at UT Austin, if a lab wants to host such a student the activity falls under the purview of the Youth Protection Program. This generates a non-trivial amount of compliance requirements, as well as financial costs for the hosting lab. In general, these requirements make it prohibitive for labs to host high school students outside of formal programs specifically set up for high school outreach.

In summary, hosting high school students comes at a substantial costs to the lab while typically not providing commensurate benefits. Therefore, we have adopted a policy of not hosting any high school students.