With college admissions becoming more and more competitive every year, students need ways to stand out from – or even remain competitive with – other students. To catch the eye of an admissions officer at a top university, students must show that they have pursued academic rigor above what is expected of normal high school students, and that their knowledge of their primary academic interest area is already at the college level. Students can accomplish this by dual-enrolling in college classes in high school or excelling in academic competitions, but probably the best way to express elite academic potential is writing a research paper, and ideally publishing it in an academic journal.
Don’t take our word for it. Listen to what universities themselves are saying. In 2022, the University of Pennsylvania–one of the Ivy League universities–signaled to its accepted class of 2026 that a third of the students had completed research in high school. Now, Penn suggests that this number could be closer to 80%. Additionally, Yale and Columbia have begun to explicitly encourage students to submit research abstracts and even full papers as supplements to their applications. Internally here at Indigo, we saw that close to 90% of our students who were accepted to top 15 universities in the 2024-2025 application cycle had at least one published research project reported on their applications. Research is becoming an expectation for students who want to be taken seriously in elite admissions offices.
This article offers guidelines for writing a good research paper, one that demonstrates university-level research skills likely to impress admissions officers and the editorial boards of academic journals. Follow along to find out how you can achieve this..
Research papers by high school students usually grow out of personal interests and curiosity. So, the first step to writing a research paper is to identify an issue that has captured your imagination, or a broad subject area (discipline) you wish to know more of. e.g. film studies, biology, history. You should then start reading books and articles about your main interests; you could also take a free online course like those offered by Coursera and Udemy if they match what you wish to research.
Broadening your knowledge through reading and extar-curricular courses is likely to generate new ideas This, in turn, will help you to better define which aspects of your favourite topic, or discipline, you would like to research. For instance, if you are interested in Indian film, you may decide, after having read a few articles and books, to focus on the development of a particular genre or the evolution of a particular actress. Narrowing the scope of your topic is an integral and necessary element of the initial stages of any research paper and should be embraced.
One of the authors of this article has supervised research projects by high-school students for several years and has found that writing a good research paper depends to a large extent on laying the right foundations in the early stages of research This involves getting into the habit of using reliable books and articles (your sources) from the very beginning, developing a new way of studying them, and learning how to reference them. Students who delay developing these habits in the early stages also tend to struggle to produce university-level papers, notwithstanding the enthusiasm that they have for their topic. Below we explain in more detail how to lay the foundations of a good research paper.
While you read books and articles to narrow your topic, you must ensure that these are trustworthy, reliable, academic sources written by experts. Wikipedia, for instance, is not considered as an acceptable source since anyone (whether expert or not) can contribute to its articles. The same applies to blogs and websites, unless created and maintained by experts. You can easily access sources suitable for academic enquiry via Google Scholar. Other useful databases include JSTOR and ScienceDirect but, unlike Google Scholar, they require a paid subscription. Educational institutions usually take out subscriptions to a range of databases so you may already have access through your school library without knowing it! Do consult your school librarian who should be able to advise you on this as well as print sources held in the library itself. Reliable sources may be closer to you than you think.
But, perhaps, the single most important element of a good research paper is the time spent studying your sources. We may seem to be stating the obvious here since students who embark on research projects to be submitted to selective universities are generally already very committed to studying academic material. However, writing a research paper requires a type of study which is rarely overtly taught, or practised, in high school.
Sources used for writing research papers may be difficult to understand the first time you read them. Not only are they ‘long’ (for instance, the average length of research papers by professional academics is 8,000-10,000 words), they also assume a degree of background knowledge in the field. Therefore, reading sources must be accompanied by a considerable amount of time spent rereading the same source, highlighting key passages, summarising main ideas, and making connections between seemingly disconnected sources. The app Zotero can help in this respect. It will not study (or write) for you but it enables you to label and organize your sources into collections so that it is easier to find them when you need them.
This ‘new’ way of reading and studying is time-consuming and may be frustrating but it is crucial for laying the foundations of a good research paper. After all, a research paper, however innovative and original, always situates itself within existing research, therefore, you must be able to engage with it when writing and this only comes from dedicating time to studying reliable sources in a systematic way. By doing this, you will also familiarize yourself with what a professional research paper looks and sounds like, which will make writing easier to manage.
Closely related to the issue of engaging and recalling academic sources is the issue of referencing. Whenever you cite from the articles and sources you have studied, or paraphrase their content, you must signal this to the reader. In other words, you must acknowledge that the material you are including in your paper is not your own and that you are prepared to credit its authors. This process is called ‘referencing’ and it is one of the distinctive characteristics of academic writing.
Referencing should be carried out within the text of your paper and at the end by compiling a list of all the sources used in alphabetical order. Referencing shows that you have carried out research on your topic, but above all, that you know the value of ‘academic integrity’ (acknowledging the authorship of ideas and content). Neglecting academic integrity is classed as plagiarism (passing someone else's work as one' s own) and can lead to disciplinary actions.
There are different ways of referencing your sources, called ‘referencing styles’. Well-known referencing styles include Harvard and MLA but there are others. Academic journals tend to have a preferred referencing style. So, if you aim to have your paper published, check which style is required and apply it consistently to your paper.
The website Cite Them Right offers resources and exercises for learning how to reference in different styles. It requires a subscription but many school libraries provide access to it, so do ask your librarian about this very useful website. The app Zotero can create references for you based on the sources you have uploaded on to it. Appropriate referencing is the bedrock of good research papers. Without it, your paper will probably be ignored by admissions officers and editorial boards.
Once you have read and studied enough sources to have a general overview of your topic, you should start to turn your main interest into a research question. A research question allows you to state which issue or problem you wish to study and what your paper will seek to find out or explain. Research questions are an essential element of research papers.This section gives advice on how to formulate a research question for a good research paper.
Research questions are often expressed in interrogative form beginning with ‘How’, ‘What’, ‘To what extent’; hence, the term ‘ research question’. For instance, a research question for a business studies paper may ask ‘How has Corporate Social Responsibility affected buyer behaviour in company X?’; while a research question for modern languages may ask ‘To what extent is learning a second language still an asset in the age of Global English?’. As your paper progresses, your research question may change to reflect your discoveries and changes in the way you view your topic, but it is important to develop one in the early stages since it will enable you to write with purpose and to develop a coherent argument.
Good research papers ask research questions that generate new insights. It is, of course, impossible, to determine the absolute originality of a research question since no one has access to everything that has been published on a given topic. However, if you have studied a range of relevant sources in the way outlined above, you should be able to gauge the originality of your research questions and your paper will appeal to admissions officers and editors. It is legitimate to replicate a research question if, for example, you wish to test its applicability to a different research context, or because you think that can be explored in a different way. Provided you acknowledge this in your paper, your question will still lend itself to writing a research paper which is original because it contributes to previous research while also flowing from it.
A good way to formulate an original research question is to narrow it as much as you can. The more specific you can be, the greater the chances of saying something original. For instance, if you are interested in the role of women in the Second World War, you may want to focus on a particular country or compare two different countries. You may then narrow your scope further and consider only working-class women. If you are interested in medicine and diabetes you could decide to discuss Type 2 Diabetes only. You could then focus on the relation between its development and lifestyle choice. This can be narrowed further by concentrating solely on the effects of diet and exercise.
Research papers come in a variety of forms, the type that you will choose will depend on the discipline and subject-matter you wish to research. Let us look at the main types of research papers that you can write.
Primary data papers involve collecting information that has not been generated before (primary data). It is usually associated with STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and the social sciences (e.g. psychology, economics, education). Collecting primary data can be achieved through different methods. If you wish to write a research paper in STEM , your method may involve experiments conducted in a laboratory. If your main interest is the social sciences, you will probably collect data by interacting with people and have them answer questionnaires, or participate in interviews.
The data collected will then have to be analysed using established scientific procedures, such as quantitative and qualitative research methods. The former typically involves numerical data and statistical analysis carried out using software such as SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) while the former tends to involve thematic analysis of interview transcripts.
Primary data papers are highly valued but they may be difficult to execute for high school students. Experiments require laboratories and equipment; when collecting data from people, you must have authorisation from your educational institution and follow a strict ethical protocol. Moreover, collecting data is very time consuming and you will need training in quantitative or qualitative analysis. It is, of course, possible to write a primary data paper in high school but, before you start, make sure you check its feasibility and obtain all the necessary permissions.
If you are interested in STEM and the social sciences but a primary data paper does not seem feasible, you can consider a secondary data paper. Secondary data papers involve analysing data that were collected by other people for purposes that may be different from yours (secondary data). In other words, they do not involve collecting your own data or running your own experiments, but they still involve conducting your own data analysis using qualittaive or quatuative methods.
Secondary data that can be used for academic research generally come from large organisations: businesses, quality daily newspapers, government departments, and consumer research bodies, to name a few. For instance, Euromonitor International provides business intelligence on countries, companies and consumers; Canada: Statistics Canada is a gateway to statistics on the economy and culture of Canada; UK Data Archive gives access to digital data in the social sciences and the humanities as well as links to other data archives.
There is a tendency to think of secondary data as numerical data obtained from surveys and censuses. However, documents in textual and visual form (e.g. minutes of committees, magazine advertisements) also count as secondary data provided they are subjected to rigorous analysis using established scientific methods.
Arts and Humanities papers involve discussing an event, artefact, phenomenon, or person related to a discipline in the Arts and Humanities, e.g. literature, modern languages, art, history, philosophy, anthropology. This type of paper resonates with some of the essays students are asked to write in high school. (Have you ever been asked to discuss a particular theme in a novel?). However, if you want colleges to view your research paper as ‘good’, you will need to demonstrate that you have an understanding of your topic and a command of academic writing which go beyond what is learned in high school.
Therefore, your paper must include an original research question to ensure you write with purpose. This will be easier if you focus on an artefact or a phenomenon that is not well-known, or if you analyse a well-known issue by applying a new theory. Further, you should introduce your argument clearly in the initial paragraphs of the paper using the sentence ‘This paper argues that …’. . For example, if your paper is about LLMs LLMs (Large Language Models) such as ChatGPT, you could write, ‘This paper argues that the rise of LLMs adversely affects the development of academic writing skills’. The sentence ‘This paper argues that …’ is a staple of Arts and Humanities papers. It signals to the audience the purpose of your paper and it will help you to stay on topic and to write with purpose.
Whether your main interest lies in biochemical engineering or French impressionist art, it is possible to write a literature review. A literature review is a comprehensive synthesis of previous work on a given topic and is a staple of academic research in any discipline. When you conduct a literature review, you should ask yourself ‘Which books, papers, and articles have already been written about my chosen topic?’ and find them using academic databases like those mentioned in section 2. A literature review is an appealing choice when you are writing a research paper since it bypasses the need for data collection and analysis which is necessary for primary and secondary data paper. At its simplest level, it involves bringing together and synthesising existing sources.
However, the pitfall you must avoid at all costs is writing a summary of each source and arranging them in chronological order, or by author. Instead, a good literature review should lead with ideas. This can be achieved by identifying recurrent themes or concepts across different sources, or by organizing sources into schools of thought and approaches. A literature review must generate a degree of new insights and have a specific purpose above and beyond summarising a list of sources. Therefore, although literature reviews do not require primary or secondary data collection, they still need a lot of research and solid foundations.
Good research papers are subdivided into sections to facilitate reading and to foreground the main ideas being discussed. Sections are signalled visually by using titles (headings) within the paper. Each section should be subdivided into paragraphs, which are signalled through line indentation or an extra blank space. What follows is an overview of the content of the main sections of a research paper and advice on how to write good paragraphs.
All research papers should include an Introduction and a Conclusion. The headings for these sections are often simply ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’, or ‘Conclusions’ in the plural. The Introduction is the first section of the paper and should state the central issue of concern and the ‘rationale’, that is, the reasons why it is worth studying. It should also include your research questions and an outline of the sections that will follow (a ‘road map’). It is important to include the most important insights yielded by your research in the Introduction itself. In other words, you should not ‘leave the best till last’ but highlight it as early as possible. This will enthuse readers and encourage them to read on.
The Conclusion is the final section. It is a summary of the whole paper and should gather up the key points made throughout it. An effective way of opening the Conclusion is to write a sentence that encourages readers to look back across the paper as a whole and to remind them what they have learned. As a summary of the paper, the Conclusion should not introduce new concepts or ideas. However, it should end by briefly considering limitations and one or two issues raised which lend themselves to be being researched further.
The sections between Introduction and Conclusion – the main body – are more difficult to define since they depend on the researcher’s own choice and on the kind of paper they intend to write. For example, primary and secondary data papers tend to adhere to a prescribed structure: Literature Review, Methods, Findings, Discussion. These sections build on each other in a logical way.
The Literature Review sets the paper within its wider theoretical context. The heading for this section can be ‘Literature Review’ but we recommend that you lead with ideas and that you choose a heading that reflects its content instead. The Methods section describes the kind of data collected, how they were collected, and the methods used to analyze them. Findings is a report of the results of the data analysis; Discussion interprets the results of the previous section in the light of the research question and their implications for the theories presented in the Literature Review.
The main body of Arts and Humanities papers is far less prescriptive. Typically, however, it should include a review of the theories and literature that underpin your paper followed by an application of those theories to your chosen artefacts or phenomena. The overall aim here is to provide case studies which exemplify (or challenge) the theories underpinning your paper.
It is important that the sections of the main body build on each other and that are roughly the same length. If a section is significantly shorter than the others it will make readers wonder if that section is really relevant. This may reflect negatively on your competence as an academic writer. So, although there is a degree of freedom in designing the main body of Arts and Humanities papers, it must contain sections that flow from one another and these must look balanced lengthwise.
When writing paragraphs, you should think of them as the micro-structure of each section. A paragraph works in the same way as a section but on a smaller scale. Just as a section addresses a single topic, so a paragraph should make one point. The point that paragraph makes should be explained in the first sentence (topic sentence). This should then be followed by a discussion of the topic sentence supported by your sources if necessary. The final line of the paragraph should act as a punchline, expressing the conclusions of the discussion initiated by the opening sentence.
You may be now asking yourself how long a paragraph is. How many words do you need to write a paragraph with a topic sentence, a discussion, and a final punchline ? The ideal paragraph length for research papers is between 100 and 250 words. If a paragraph is longer than 250 words, or shorter than 100, you should merge some of its content with other paragraphs, or create a new paragraph. Applying this rule will have a positive impact on admissions officers and editorial boards. Seeing balanced paragraphs is visually appealing. Most importantly, it immediately speaks of proficiency in academic writing and announces that the research paper they are about to read may well be a good research paper.
Writing a research paper is both exciting and confusing. Although you may have plenty of original ideas and you have already laid good foundations by studying several sources, it can be difficult to transfer these on the page and to include all the elements of good research papers. Writing a research paper is your task but it is useful and acceptable to get other people to help.
Many students start by getting help from generative AI (gen AI) but gen AI is not a real person. Moreover, while it may be useful for brainstorming ideas, AI-generated content will not be accepted by either admissions or editorial boards and may be classed as plagiarism. Therefore, it must be avoided.
An obvious source of guidance are your school teachers or university students who have already written research papers. However, they may not have time to dedicate to your project long term. Therefore if you need consistent and regular guidance from the early stages of research through to completion and, perhaps, even publication, Indigo Research can help. Here at Indigo, we offer 1-to-1 guidance tailored to your needs by pairing you with an academic mentor who has experience in academic writing and research papers. Join our online high school student mentorship program and start writing a good research paper.
Writing research paper can be challenging as a high school student. And getting help with real mentor, not just can make it a lot easier, but also offers many more academic benefit. Do your research with our mentors who has helped thousands of students get into top universities!
.png)
Writing research paper can be challenging as a high school student. And getting help with real mentor, not just can make it a lot easier, but also offers many more academic benefit. Do your research with our mentors who has helped thousands of students get into top universities!
.avif)
