When growing up, it can be difficult to transition to different environments. Going to college, leaving your family, moving away from home and entering a new community can be stressful, but also very exciting. This Spring Break, I visited two college campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area and interviewed a STEM-oriented freshman who has yet to declare a major. The student is a Fieldston alumna and a graduate of our Science Research program. The young researcher shared her experiences of pursuing STEM beyond high school.
There were “not a lot of similarities between high school and college,” said Rachel Youngwood ‘24, a freshman at Stanford University. Stanford felt different for her, not only because it’s on the West Coast, but also in how classes are run. The classes are much larger compared to Fieldston. Rachel elaborated, “The first year, you take a lot of big seminars with 100-200 people in the class. Currently, IntroSem on reproductive biology and legislation is the only class I’m taking that feels similar to high school. It’s a small class and very discussion-based.” Although different learning styles, Rachel added, “Fieldston prepares you really well for college.”
Like many other universities, Stanford students don’t have to declare majors until the end of their sophomore year. Rachel plans on majoring in Human Biology on the pre-med track with a music minor. Rachel’s passion for science has been evident to her since Lower School. Once entering Fieldston’s upper division, she enrolled in the Science Research program in her sophomore year and has taken the course every year since. “Fieldston helped me flesh out and develop my interests and let me decide if this was something I wanted to do practically instead of just conceptually saying ‘I like science.’”
First-year Science Research students are taught lab techniques such as DNA extraction, amplification and analysis. They are given the opportunity to work with professional lab equipment such as centrifuges, PCR machines and incubators. Rachel shared that the Science Research course “gives you a step up, making you more prepared and competitive when you are applying to programs that are not just for freshmen. I’ve been contacting professors about working in their lab and it has always been a great talking point.”
These skills are also applied outside the classroom. For example, students are taught how to draft well-written emails to Principal Investigators (PIs) to work with them over the summer. Rachel was able to find two internships by the end of her first year of Science Research under the guidance of the teachers facilitating the classes. One was a wet lab in France, and the other was a lab at Columbia University. Students collect data over the summer and write a report during their second year of Science Research. “It was cool to explain something I had expertise in to someone who wasn’t as knowledgeable about the topic. Making what I learned into digestible language gave me confidence.”
Although working in a real-world lab setting is very exciting, finding a summer volunteer position is not easy. Due to the Trump administration’s plan to “change how the National Institutes of Health pays for medical research at universities,” many labs are facing threats of funding cuts. This leads to many ongoing research projects being paused. Whether writing to PIs or college professors, the process is difficult and is often a numbers game. However, the skills of constructing an outreach email and the lab work methods gained will continue to be helpful beyond high school. Being exposed to a research environment at a young age is valuable. Rachel explained, “The science research program did a great job letting me work with my teachers to work out a final product that I submitted to many of the schools that I applied to.”
The pursuit of science is challenging. I am grateful to have been able to seek advice from someone who has more experience. Before ending my interview with Rachel, she shared with me her advice to current/future science research students: “You might not realize it at the moment but Fieldston prepares you well academically, and if you take advantage of the science research program it gives you a unique experience that will tell you whether or not you are really interested in doing research as a career.”
From collecting samples and extracting their DNA to writing a report and sharing your findings with others, having these experiences in high school is incredibly valuable. The skills of Science Research taught at Fieldston will stick with you throughout college.
