u/Icicl37

I'm a high school junior planning to apply to MIT. One of the portfolios I'm planning to submit is the research portfolio, but I'm now second guessing that. I have written two papers and have attempted to publish neither. The first is library research on K-12 cybersecurity and is pretty basic and the second is a mediocre at best synthesis on modern memetics application, but it's written ehh. Parts of it are a pretty disconnected and there are lot of digressions, plus I'm not sure if this portfolio is really just for lab research. If I submit either and get a bad review from readers because of it would that hurt me, or would they disregard it if it ended up being terrible? I think there's a decent chance that, particularly the second one, might catch the eye of someone for being pretty unique (there isn't much written about memetics) and others have told me it is a good read, but it could also be interpreted as a shitty attempt at writing a research paper if they look past that. I don't think it is a shitty attempt personally, but most of the people who read it and liked it did so because it was interesting, and none of them are hardcore STEM people, so I really barely have any feedback on how it fares in terms of research. Also is it true that you don't actually submit your full paper and just an abstract/poster? Because if so I feel like that will amplify this by either seeming like an interesting research topic or a not-very-rigorous research topic. Also regardless is it better to submit an abstract or poster? I have both for this.