Biology, or life sciences, is one of the most popular majors nation-wide across all types of colleges and universities. At many top schools, it is the single most popular major — often by far. The reason for this isn’t all that surprising, especially at top schools. Biology is the start of the road to medical school or another path into the medical sciences, but it also offers a wide array of options with strong career futures. Biology is relevant for a multitude of career paths outside of medicine, from conservation work to science writing, but the link between an undergraduate biology major and a career in the medical sciences is undoubtedly a key piece of the biology major pipeline.
We often hear from high school students that they want to pursue a major in biology, but aren’t sure what to do before they get to a college campus. This poses a major problem for crafting a competitive application, because a student with a dream is only powerful if their dream is matched by action now. In this post, we’ll let you see behind the curtain and into how we map out competitive and fulfilling (and fun!) activities for students who are hoping to pursue biology at a top university. The best plan is to have a plan, and this post can form the start to your application activities strategy. If you want to go deeper, get in touch.
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There are so many different activities that students can pursue that would be relevant to their prospective area of study. There are clubs, jobs, paid programs, etc., and all of it is valuable — but you can’t do everything. And you also shouldn’t only do biology things. But there have to be activities on your application that speak directly to your prospective major. Sometimes this means getting creative, and that’s sort of the whole point. Now, let’s break it down.
CLUBS & TEAMS
The most obvious place to look for things to do outside of your classes is at school. It’s close, it’s convenient, and your friends are probably doing it. So, you should join biology-related clubs at school like Science Bowl, Science Olympiad, or a club for aspiring future medical professionals. But clubs and teams in your high school can also come with limitations. Let us address the biggest ones.
First, you’re limited to what is offered at your school. On its face, this is a problem. If your school doesn’t have a Science Bowl team that’s tough luck, right? Wrong. This is where and when you start something. Starting a school club isn’t always easy, but all of the clubs that currently exist were started by someone. Why not you? First, find a faculty adviser. Then, recruit friends.
Second, you have to wait until junior year, or most often senior year, to have a leadership position. For large and popular clubs and teams, this is often the case. There are so many students looking for a chance to lead that you simply aren’t going to be tapped before you are, at earliest, a junior. However, if you start a club you get to be the leader from day one.
We’re not saying that you shouldn’t join a club if you aren’t going to be leader or captain as a junior, but we do want all of our students to have at least one school-based leadership position on their resume by the end of junior year. This ensures that early applications submitted in the fall of their senior year are able to reflect well-executed leadership positions, along with success stories ‘from the field.’ So, it’s all about balance. Join clubs at school and focus on opportunities for leadership potential, but leave time open for all the amazing things that can be accomplished off campus if you push yourself to explore biology deeply before you press submit.
INTERNSHIPS & EMPLOYMENT
Think about what kind of college you want to go to. Do you want a small liberal arts school with a tight-knit community and strong biology program, or a large research university with a dedicated pre-med track and an alphabet’s worth of science laboratories doing cutting-edge research?
You don’t need to be set on a plan many years in advance, but it does help to have some idea of what your dream environment is. This is especially true because different types of colleges look for different things in applicants. If you are applying to study biology at a top large research university, they expect to see you engaging in research in some way (we’ll go more into that later).
If you are more interested in the small, liberal arts route, especially if they have a strong core curriculum, they may be more flexible in connecting the dots between how you spend your time outside of class and your academic interests for college. That said, there is no excuse to not be doing something within the realm of an internship or a part-time job by the summer of your junior year. It doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned with your hoped for career path, and it will almost certainly be at the very bottom of the ladder, but you should be able to show a connection between the experience and your dream of majoring in biology.
For example, getting an internship at a biotech firm or a summer job at a lab would be amazing, and we work our students to do exactly this type of experience. However, if you need to work a paying job over summer break it is possible to, say, get a Wilderness First Aid certification and a job at a local day camp. Working as a lifeguard, too, is actually directly related to your biology interest, especially if you want to be on a pre-med path. Through such experiences as these, you would be showing tenacity, care for others, and hands-on learning beyond what is required of you. We’ve also had students earn their EMT certifications and work on their local ambulance corps, connect a passion for food systems to an internship with a local food redistribution non-profit, and intern with wildlife management programs. If you live near a zoo, look into volunteer and internship programs.
RESEARCH
Once you have an internship and, let’s say, a successful Science Olympiad season under your belt, it’s time to up the ante. By this, we mean research. We do not advise our students to pursue research in their first two years of high school because research is time intensive and, mostly, solitary. As a freshman and sophomore, you need to be building relationships and finding your footing in clubs and on teams. If you want to lead Science Bowl as a junior, you can’t be phoning it in as a freshman. Having more experience in the field of biology, even at a high school level, will also help you come up with what kinds of research questions you want to be asking. Then, once you’re ready to participate in research, it’s time to pick an avenue. For biology, there are a few routes you could take.
One is to get a volunteer research position with a lab or field-based program. Depending on your interest, this could mean sorting through paperwork or counting migratory cranes. Personally, we’d rather lay in a field counting birds, but it’s all about what gets you excited.
Another route is to take on a solo project aimed at something like the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) or the Science Talent Search (STS), both of which are extremely prestigious and competitive. If you can place in a meaningful way in either of these competitions, that is massive — but the odds are miniscule. Think, less than half the chance of getting into Harvard. That’s okay if you are passionate and driven, but it’s a problem if you make this project the center of your universe outside of school. Betting on it getting you into college is, to be blunt, a terrible bet.
We recommend that our students only take on an independent project for a national competition or for publication if there is something else in the activities that they are doing related to biology that is team-based or otherwise collaborative. We are regularly approached by students and parents after disappointing early application results wondering why their ‘perfect’ kid didn’t get into the ‘perfect’ school despite having all of the grades and scores. Most of the time, the problem is that they didn’t demonstrate in their application that they thrive as part of a team. It is critical that you can spotlight yourself as someone who plays well with others, and burying yourself in a solo project does not accomplish this.
SUMMER PROGRAMS
The last big bucket of activities are the kinds of programs that are pitched constantly to high school students for summer vacation. These are most often at or through universities, and offer intensive ‘college-esque’ experiences with a combination of coursework and summer camp-style fun. Summer programs are, sometimes, an amazing addition to a student’s resume — but not always. The most important thing, like when looking for you dream school, is ‘fit’. If you are interested in a summer program, it should be a program that is specifically tuned to your area of academic interest, offering you opportunities you have not had access to before, and, ideally, be highly competitive.
Some biology summer programs are lecture-based, some are lab-based, and others immerse participants in the field. Some have a few hours of coursework a day, while others are nearly 24/7 immersive experiences. There is no right or wrong, but there is a right one for you. Do not pick a summer program simply to fill a week that you don’t have anything to do. That’s a bad investment, and we’d honestly rather see you volunteering at a local farmer’s market or mowing lawns for that week. Instead, remember that the key to a strong activities section is each one building upon the other to best illustrate your character, commitment, work ethic, and growth. Sometimes a summer program does that, and sometimes we tell students that they are better off doing a yard-wide four-leaf clover census.
As a student interested in biology, there is so much that you can do to strengthen your college applications outside of the school day. These activities should also be fulfilling and fun, and they should push you beyond what you thought you were capable of. Don’t limit this personal growth to bio-related extracurriculars, though. You are more than science, and colleges want to see that too. Play a sport, pick up an instrument, or help a friend with a passion project. Doing some things for the future, and some things simply for the fun of it right now, is valuable. Maybe you’ll even find a research question in an unexpected place.
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