The Fall Fellows program is designed to give highly motivated high school students from our Summer Research or Spring Workshop programs the opportunity to plan, execute and present a social science research project with the guidance of a Columbia University researcher. Classes are taken remotely, with students coordinating their research activities with one another and the researcher. Research topics are often adapted from the previous summer’s winning research proposals.

During the course, students will:

• Collaborate to formulate interesting research questions with respect to relevant scholarship.

• Understand participant-based research ethics in line with the standards of an Institutional Review Board (IRB).

• Explore a wide range of research methods, ultimately pursuing one or more of these in order to help answer their chosen research question.

• Analyze and interpret their collected data.

• Frame their findings within the social scientific discussion(s) pertaining to their topic.

By the end of the course, students will have produced a research paper of sufficient quality to submit as a writing sample for an undergraduate program. Research papers from past years include:

• Collectivism and Individualism: A Comparative Study of Adolescents in Domestic and International Chinese Schools (2018)

• How are Adolescent Eco-Friendly Purchase Decisions Influenced? An analysis of parent, peer, and normative influence (2017)

• Gentrification and Food Preference (2016)

Applications to the program will be made available in early August of each year.