| I think you should not mention it. Your qualifications will come through in the rest of your app - RSI is impressive for the research experience, which an alternate wouldn't have. Better to gain research experience some other way, or show your awesomeness with awards/qualifications that represent what you've done. Congrats on being selected as an alternate!! (I got rejected from RSI but got into MIT, so I totally know that RSI is crazy intensive to get into), I don't want to say that being selected as an alternate means nothing, as it totally doesn't. I just think that a college app, especially MIT's, is all about showing what you've done and what you like, and being selected as an RSI alternate doesn't specifically help them get any idea of what you've done or what's meaningful to you; it just shows them that you're a very qualified person, which they could probably already tell anyway. :-) |