I am part of this area of high school / pre college research and part of a high school that is successful in having students reach high levels of high school re

I am part of this area of high school / pre college research and part of a high school that is successful in having students reach high levels of high school research including myself, so I can shed some insight. These kinds of stories show up all the time and it is usually the case that they have received some kind of outside help. But in the world of competitive high school research, there is a lot more emphasis on making innovations which are successful and more immediately applicable at the trade off of being something superficial or abandoning projects or ideas that don't appear to be immediately amazing or successful since they are easy to quickly dismiss in a competitive environment. However, there are plenty of amazing students who go on and win ISEF and other top competitions who collaborate with professors and engineers and I certainly encourage collaboration like this. Although, within my own research, I have remained independent since at my school, my research director's and other research teachers' main field is in biology or chemistry, leaving little domain specific assistance for me who has perused projects with heavy electrical engineering and computer science knowledge and skills. I have tried to reach out to professors before, but I can be hard to find someone whose project ideas and interests align with yours (without having to travel long distances to meet and work with them at their universities which I am able to do). The world of high school research is fiercely competitive and without some kind of collaboration or connections with professors and professionals, it becomes almost impossible to reach the top and be successful. I have managed to do this on my own but it has been a struggle and very competitive and hard journey in which I regret not finding someone such as a professor to work with. I sometimes worry that my research friends and high schoolers that pursue research will abandon or forget about the idea core values of research and collaboration in the unforgiving world of high school competitive research. I know this has kinda turned into a rant but if you have any questions about the world of competitive research or my own research I would be glad to talk about it since I rarely see this subject talked about outside of the high school research community.