Dear High School Student,

Thank you for reaching out and for your enthusiasm for my field of research. It is always exciting to encounter students eager to engage in trade, development, and growth research.

This is a standardized reply because, over the past few years, an increasing number of high schools have implemented programs that require or encourage students to conduct research with a university professor. The volume of these requests has made it necessary for me to share the information below upfront.

At this time, my research agenda is structured around advanced econometric and theory modeling methods that require specialized graduate-level coursework. Even university undergraduates must complete my upper-division courses before joining my research projects, ensuring they have the theoretical subject background and technical foundations to contribute and gain meaningful experience.

If you are looking to build a foundation for future university-level research, I strongly recommend that you continue to develop your quantitative skills by expanding your background in mathematics, statistics, and programming, start taking UW courses, and complete intermediate macro and micro so you can take 400-level subject courses.

I wish you the very best as you finish high school and look toward your university studies.

Sincerely,

Theo Eicher

Castor Professor of Economics

Faculty.washington.edu/te

P.S. The designers of your high school program may want to get in touch with our dedicated teaching faculty or me to explore collaborations to design a program that aligns high school skill levels with the research in our department. At present, these mandates seem to result in students feeling they should send out numerous cold emails with little hope of success, simply because the program requirements do not match university research realities.