High School Programs

This nine‐week program offers a chance to learn, explore, and gain hands‐on experience in a Children’s Hospital Medical Center research laboratory environment for 14 to 15 minority students each summer. The online application will open December 1st . Click this link to complete the application.

Applications for 2023 are due on March 1, 2023.

Each BRIMS intern will be paired with a research mentor to pursue a nine-week full time basic science, or clinical biomedical research project during the summer. All interns will give a five-minute PowerPoint presentation of their research project to the group and are encouraged to present a poster at the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Capstone poster competition at the end of the program.

In addition to participating in SURF activities, BRIMS interns participate in weekly networking luncheons and shadowing opportunities with minority faculty in several different clinical specialties. Participants will be paid $13.00 / hr. The BRIMS program is sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and Career Development at Cincinnati Children's and a generous endowment from the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund.

Applicants must be from a racial or ethnic group that is underrepresented in biomedical research including Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, American Indian or Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (Guam, Samoa). This program is open to high achieving graduating high school seniors and college freshmen from the Cincinnati tri-state area only.

The BRIMS program is highly competitive. Only US citizens, or green card holders are eligible to apply for the program. Successful applicants are high achieving graduating high school seniors or students completing their first year of college and have taken multiple science courses (rising Freshmen or Sophomores). We consider high school class rank, GPA, ACT or SAT scores (if available), number of science classes taken, leadership in extracurricular activities and recommendations to narrow the applications to 20 finalists. From those, the top 14 to 15 will be matched with mentors based on their personal essays and interviews, depending on funding. All applicants must submit a one-page personal essay describing their career goals and what kind of research they are interested in doing at Cincinnati Children's.

Please compile and submit the following information online:

1. Complete the online application form including uploading your resume with a list of extracurricular activities and leadership positions held, your personal essay about your career goals, and your High School transcript including grades through the fall semester 2021 and ACT or SAT scores, if available. Note, if you are currently a college freshman, include a transcript of your fall college grades.

2. Ask two references to email letters of recommendation to brims@cchmc.org. At least one letter of recommendation should be from a science teacher or scientist.

All application materials must be submitted online or by email to brims@cchmc.org.