How to Get Lab Research Opportunities

For many high schoolers interested in STEM, particularly biological sciences, getting a lab research opportunity is their dream. Getting a research internship can be a stellar addition to your resume and college applications, but also a great way to gauge if research/medicine is a career you would be interested in pursuing in the future. But, given high schoolers’ young age and relative inexperience in research settings, it can be particularly difficult to obtain a research internship. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Definitely not! I myself participated in research the summer after my freshman year by attending CU Boulder’s STEM Research program as well as the summer after my sophomore year at the Duan Lab at UCSF’s Ophthalmology Department. 

So, here are my tips for finding a research opportunities:

  1. Use your network. The easiest way you can dip your toe into finding research opportunities is to call upon the people you personally know for help. Ask any relatives, family friends, or acquaintances you may have if they have any contacts at local universities or private scientific laboratories. It can be extremely helpful to personally know someone that can point you in the right direction. Also, check with your teachers at school. Many of your STEM teachers may have engaged in scientific research during their education and may still have contacts in the research field. Don’t shy away from asking your teachers to connect you with a professional researcher. Remember: having a personal contact won’t definitively get you a research position, but it can at least get you in touch with the right person to discuss any opportunities that exist. Also, if you don’t have any existing contacts in the research field, don’t worry! There are many other ways to go about obtaining a research internship; I didn’t have any contacts either, and my incessant cold emailing ultimately resulted in a research internship. 
  2. Send cold emails. Cold emails are emails where you reach out to someone you do not know. Because of this, successfully obtaining a research internship through solely cold emails can be quite difficult, but not impossible, like I mentioned earlier. My advice in sending cold emails is to send as many emails as possible. By doing so, you are greatly maximizing your chances at receiving a “Yes” response from a lab. Also, make sure to thoroughly research each lab before you cold email them. You don’t find yourself in a situation where you have received a “Yes” response from a lab but you aren’t really interested in their research projects. For more information on how to navigate cold emails, check out these articles I have written: How to Write Cold Emails to Find Research Internships and Who Do I Send Cold Emails To?
  3. Attend university-level talks, conferences, and seminars. The reason many cold emails do not pan out is that professors and labs in general prefer to hire interns that they have met before so that they know the intern is a reliable, trustworthy, and hardworking individual. However, it can be hard to prove all these qualities through just a cold email. What you can do, instead, is to attend talks, conferences, and seminars at universities regularly. By doing so, you are essentially “marketing” yourself to your best ability directly to professors and labs. Additionally, you will directly be able to ask for email addresses of labs — instead hunting the internet for email addresses — and ask whether or not these labs would be interesting in taking on a high school intern. It is crucial, though, to create a good impression of yourself during these conversations, so make sure to ask questions about their research and demonstrate your genuine interest in their work. Once you have collected email addresses and then send out emails to these labs, you are much more likely to have your receiver open and respond to your email because now the receiver recognizes your name. Regardless of finding research internships, attending such university events is a great way to increase your knowledge about your field of interest and expand your network!

There is still one important question I haven’t yet addressed, which is how do you even go about finding these university-level talks, conferences, and seminars? Read the following article to learn more: Which University Research Events Should I Attend? 

  1. For a “formal” research internship, apply to summer programs. If finding a research internship on your own has not panned out after months and months of hard work, there are still ways to find research internships. Consider applying to “formal” research summer programs that are for a structured amount of time. There are tons of great research summer programs that you can easily apply to, and perhaps participate in (if you get in), to perform research as a high schooler. Since you are applying to these programs, there are a few additional requirements such as recommendation letters, writing essays, and possibly even interviews. You also have to pay to attend most of these programs. Nevertheless, consider applying to the following summer research programs:
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