Doing original research as a high school student lets you explore questions that genuinely interest you and build skills that matter for college and beyond. It turns learning into more than an assignment or a grade. By investigating a topic in depth, you sharpen your critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication, and you get a real sense of what working in a field is like. That experience can shape what you study later and gives your applications something concrete to point to.
The hardest part is usually figuring out what to research in the first place. A good topic has to clear three bars at once: it should not have been done already, it should be feasible for a high schooler without years of specialized training, and it should be novel and useful enough to eventually be published in a real journal. I won’t hand you ideas here, but I hope this post gives you the tools to find your own.
Brainstorming
You can pursue almost any idea you want, as long as it meets these three constraints:
- You can actually do the work it requires. The knowledge isn’t too specialized and the cost is low.
- The idea is novel.
- The idea helps advance the field.
Hitting all three at once is genuinely hard. Many ideas you come up with have already been done. Even when you think of something new, it’s tough to know whether other people will value it, because you aren’t immersed in the field the way active researchers are. On top of that, you’re working with limited time and resources as a high school student.
Keep in mind that most strong research isn’t done alone. Talking to researchers is itself a good way to brainstorm. Once you have a field of interest and a rough idea of what you’d like to investigate, read on for how to do this.
Collaboration is key
Identify Potential Mentors
Look for teachers, professors, or experts at your school or local colleges and universities. Reach out to people who specialize in areas related to your interests and ask whether they’d be willing to mentor you. Professors are often doing research themselves and may welcome the chance to guide a motivated student. Most are focused on their own undergraduates rather than random high schoolers, but some will help, especially if you contact a lot of people. This is also why I’d advise against specializing too narrowly: your pool of potential collaborators shrinks, and you may discover you enjoy something else entirely.
I wrote a detailed guide on the mechanics of crafting and sending cold emails so that you can put this into practice right away.
Explain Your Goals
When you connect with a potential mentor, be clear that you want to pursue a high school research project. Outline the topics or disciplines you’re interested in. Ask for their take on areas that need further study or approaches they’d recommend. Mentors can point you toward knowledge gaps worth investigating, since finding those gaps is part of their own work.
Discuss Your Ideas
Once you’ve developed some initial ideas, set up time to run them by your mentor. They can tell you whether an idea is novel, impactful, and viable given your skills and resources. They can poke holes in your reasoning, suggest ways to adjust the scope, and push you to turn it into a clear research question.
Seek Guidance
Beyond evaluating your ideas, a mentor can coach you through the whole process, from ideation to execution to presentation. They can point you to useful resources, recommend methods, help you work through obstacles, and make sure you’re following ethical research protocols. A good guide can raise both the quality and the significance of your work.
Your mentor will know things you probably won’t, such as which journals to target and whether your idea is publishable.
Make It Official
Ask whether there are any formal mentor/mentee programs through your school, local universities, student organizations, or companies. These structured programs come with built-in oversight and expectations that help the relationship stay productive. If you go the informal route instead, clarify time commitments, meeting schedules, and responsibilities up front.
Conclusion
Once you’ve found a mentor and worked through these steps, you should be ready for them to guide you through publication. If you get there, you’ll likely have a paper co-authored by you, your mentor, and any other collaborators. With luck, you’ll enjoy the process, start building a network of researchers, and come away with a strong asset for college and scholarship applications.
Since you’re interested in research, I’d recommend learning about your options through Rishab’s Ultimate STEM Student Guide, which is free for anyone. It covers 50+ competitions to consider, research opportunities, a guide to internships, and cold email templates.
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