How to Cold-Email Professors
Everyone seems to think the new admissions "meta" is to do research with a professor. As an ex-college instructor myself, I'm going to tell you exactly how (and how not) to cold-email professors, but first I want to be very clear: profs are busy and stressed and it is not their job to help you get into college. If your main motivation behind research is college acceptances, please don't waste their time—there's another type of research you can do without them (see bottom of this post).
First, don't e-blast a million profs with an impersonal, unchanged template; I've received those emails and sent them straight to my spam folder. The times my colleagues and I responded to high schoolers were when they personalized their messages, clearly demonstrating that they'd done their research. You can do this by:
reading the profs' papers on Google Scholar;
poring over their old syllabi;
(for practicing artists) learning about their previous works / showcases / performances;
if you're ambitious, buying and reading full books they've published.
The more time and effort you put into researching and understanding any professor's work, the more meaningful your email will be, and the better chance they'll respond. Here's a template I've seen work for dozens of my students over the years:
Open with, "Dear Professor / Dr. _____," (You can find their email addresses in colleges' faculty directories.)
Briefly introduce yourself. Share your name, your grade, your high school, and a quick flex or two (e.g. "I have a 4.0 GPA" or "I placed in the top 99% of PSAT takers"...something that objectively sounds impressive. You want to stand out from the million, "Dear sir/madam" emailers that are your competition).
Describe your interest in the professor's research area, how you've pursued it yourself, and how you discovered their work. (Something like, "Ever since AP Psych last year, I've been obsessed with the field—last month, I even started my school's first Neuropsychology Club. Reading psych studies' abstracts on Google Scholar, I discovered your work on cognition and free will and found myself enraptured, particularly by your 2019 Columbia study on metacognition and blah blah blah..." You only need a few lines about their work, but the more specific you are, the more flattered they'll be and, thus, the more likely to respond.)
Make your pitch. Ask if they have any opportunities for you to further deepen your interest in the field. Important: this doesn't just include becoming a research assistant! They already have loads of undergrads for that who aren't minors like you and are already on campus. You can ask about any ongoing discussion sections they're a part of or listservs you could join or research projects...your goal is to spark an ongoing correspondence and make meaningful connections, not just to get your name on a paper. And a little self-awareness here goes a long way; one line an ex-student used that helped land her 12 professor responses was something like, "I know the prospect of working with a high schooler likely sounds like more work than it's worth, but I promise I am diligent, self-motivated, and eager to learn."
(This is important) Give them an easy out. In the case of them having no opportunities ready, ask them if they have any suggested reading or advice they wish they had when they were starting out. More often than not, profs won't have a perfect research position at-hand, but they may be down to share some tips, and this kind of correspondence (a) can turn into meaningful mentorship and (b) looks strong on college apps regardless.
Gracefully close. Thank them sincerely for their time and sign off in letter form (Warmly, _____ or Sincerely, _____).
Finally, I know a lot of you won't want to hear this, but a good rule of thumb is: if you would still do all this work and research without being allowed to mention it on your college apps, you should proceed. If you wouldn't, then don't waste professors' time. Either way, there is a secretly OP option you can pursue: the meta-analysis.
Every field is constantly in need of new summaries of existing works—these are called "systematic reviews," and you can first-author one with nothing but a computer and an internet connection. It's a weird type of document, so I'd recommend finding some examples on Google to familiarize yourself. But if you really want to do something impressive (and if you have some math / statistics know-how), you can then take your systematic review results to the next level and conduct a meta-analysis, a mathematical summary of your findings. Like the meta- prefix implies, this is a study about studies—no research lab or army of volunteers needed. (The distinction between the two is honestly tricky, so here's a paper that goes more in-depth; I’ll likely write a standalone piece about meta-analyses soon.) You can find helpful systematic review and meta-analysis templates online, and then all you need to do is find your niche topic, read everything that's been published on it, and then begin drawing data-based conclusions. At the end, you'll have first-authored your own research paper, one that's actually substantive and not just resume-padding BS. If it's good enough, you can submit it for publication.
And that's it! Research is no joke, and doing it with a professor is extremely challenging and only meant for those driven by genuine passion. It can absolutely be a boon to your college apps, but you should only pursue it if you first do your research, approach profs respectfully, and are prepared for widespread rejection. But at any rate, I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, please reach out via my “contact” page :)