How to email a professor for research in high school

AA reader in Stanford's admissions office said it plainly: high school students who assume a professor, lab director, local official or company will ignore them could not be more wrong. The assumption is understandable. A student is seventeen, the adult is busy and important, and the gap feels too wide to cross, so the email that might have changed a summer never gets written.

That silence costs more than families realize. The student who never asks gives up a mentor, months of real work, often a strong letter, and a line on the page a reader would have remembered, while a classmate with the same interest sends the email and gets the reply. The reasons the answer so often comes back yes have little to do with the student's record.