Weekly Briefing: The newest way to buy an advantage in college admissions

Companies that charge high-school students to make them "peer reviewed" authors sometimes have ties to the journals that publish them. ADVERTISEMENT [Weekly Briefing Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Apple News]( [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. High-school students are publishing “peer reviewed” research to beef up their college applications If a family is paying thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars for college-admissions enhancements — think essay-writing consultants, or fancy extracurricular activities to help students stand out — they may also shell out thousands for “junior research programs.” The programs can charge [$]( to $8,800](. Paid “mentors” (often doctoral students) help the high-schoolers create research papers about a range of topics. They help them pick a topic, pitch it, do the study, and write about it. They help edit the paper. While some companies don’t promise that a high-school student’s paper will be published in a journal, many students do eventually have something published to show for their work. In one case detailed for a story we published this week with ProPublica, a marketing-research paper about the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A was accepted by The Scholarly Review, an online journal for high-school research, and appeared in a preprint platform. But Sophia, the high-school student who wrote the paper, didn’t know the difference between the journal and the preprint platform. Later, she said she didn’t think the step down in prestige would limit her college chances. “It’s just important that there’s a link out there,” she said. The papers usually appear in online publications that are favored by the research services: the Journal of Student Research, the Journal of Research High School, the International Journal of High School Research. Some outlets, like The Scholarly Review, publish preprints as well, making it harder to determine what standards, if any, a manuscript was held to. And admissions officers usually don’t have the time or expertise to evaluate the research. The first reader of a college application may take only 10 minutes to go through the information. That means the admissions officer isn’t likely to read the published paper, just note its existence. Even if the officer gets an outside opinion, some admissions deans say the mentor’s recommendation, even if the mentor was paid, carries more weight than the research itself. Some publications hide their ties to research services. The Scholarly Review does not disclose to readers that it is funded and founded by Scholar Launch, a company that helps high-school students publish research. Roger Worthington, chair of The Scholarly Review’s editorial board, works as a mentor for Scholar Launch and InGenius Prep, an admissions-counseling service. Worthington advised three of the seven students who wrote articles in The Scholarly Review’s inaugural issue. Worthington told ProPublica that he had recused himself from discussing those manuscripts for publication in The Scholarly Review. Scholar Launch also changed its policy for future issues. In an email, Worthington wrote that the company would disclose its mentoring arrangements to ensure that no one was reviewing the work of a former student. After ProPublica raised further questions, Worthington said the journal would make it “more obvious” that the editorial board is “not responsible” for articles published on its preprint platform. [Read more here]( about the relationship between families eager to get their students into top colleges and the latest cottage industry springing up to help them. ADVERTISEMENT NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. 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