10th-11th grade summer programs (chances?)

ichheissemann · December 31, 2010, 2:48pm

I’m a current sophomore seeking the right summer program.
So far, I’ve looked at:
*EPGY
*US Congressional Page
*YESS

What are some others? I prefer math, science, and social studies, in order from most to least. Also, with the stats below, what are my odds of getting in to each program? Of course, I only expect an approximate answer, knowing that many admissions are semi-random.

Here’s my basic stats:

GPA: 4.0 (unweighted)
Rank: 1
ACT: 35 (33/35/34/36 & 10)
AP courses: Taking World History this year

ECs:
Quiz bowl
*JV team undefeated two years in a row, leading scorer, captain
**Varsity team, top 16 last year, led scoring both years
*Debate team, both years
*Working on original research in combinatorics
*Founded Mu Alpha Theta chapter this year
*Attended student gov’t conference three years running
*Minor math stuff
*Taking the AMC 10 in Feb.
*Golf JV team, sophomore year
*What are the general rules of thumb for using awards before 9th grade?

Community service: 
*None officially documented, but 70-100 hr this year
*Helped organize football tournament
*Helped organize learning festival
*Tutored fellow students, avg. student raised 5 points in relevant subject area on ACT

Location: Appalachian KY
School: Public. High dropout rate (~50%, I think), >90% qualify for subsidized lunch
Income bracket: $75k-$99k
Ethnicity: White

Because of that income bracket, I don’t qualify for a lot of financial aid, but my family hasn’t five grand for a summer program (i.e. EPGY).

About recommendations and essays: I can get great letters of recommendation and I’m a fairly good writer myself.

Thanks,
IHM

PrincipalV · December 31, 2010, 3:16pm

Try Yale Ivy Scholars (harder to get into than most of these elite college summer programs) if you are interested in America’s Economic Philosophy or Grand Strategy.

Summer Science Program if you have a serious aptitude in math.

gangstergoose · January 1, 2011, 2:30am

Regarding the chance, you don’t seem to have any deadly flaws, so you’ll probably be okay. Your school offers surprisingly nice extracurriculars for the drop out rate. I have a friend who went to HSSC–another Stanford summer program–and he recommended that. Apparently HSSC and EPGY shared the same lunch room, and “the EPGY kids” were a bit “immature.” I don’t know much about either program, just telling what I have heard. You might want to look into that if you’re interested in Stanford this summer, but it doesn’t look like the best program to me (although the admission rate is pretty high). Additionally, if money is a big issue, I think it is even more costly than EPGY. I wish you luck, applying to YESS as white (it is designed for minorities), which is exactly what I plan to do. Even more so as a sophomore. I don’t think you will get accepted, but it is definitely worth a shot. You might have an extremely inspiring story that I don’t know about that you could express in your essays, so I really can’t say.

Here is the list I am looking at (I am a math/science kid also):
<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/before/summer_programs/more_hs_summer_programs.shtml[/url]”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/before/summer_programs/more_hs_summer_programs.shtml</a>

energize · January 1, 2011, 3:30am

Stanford’s HSSC costs much more than EPGY. Don’t bother with that or similar programs (i.e. Harvard SSP).

For math, try AwesomeMath/AMSP (if you like competitions; I went here and it lived up to its name), Ross, PROMYS (if you like spending ***loads of time doing deep number theory stuff), HCSSiM, or Mathcamp (if you like varied programs in theoretical math).

For science, all I have knowledge of are [Iowa</a> SSTP](<a href=“http://www.education.uiowa.edu/belinblank/old/summer/programs/9-11/sstp/eligibility.asp]Iowa”>http://www.education.uiowa.edu/belinblank/old/summer/programs/9-11/sstp/eligibility.asp), [url=<a href=“http://www.cpet.ufl.edu/sstp/default.html]UF-SSTP[/url”>http://www.cpet.ufl.edu/sstp/default.html]UF-SSTP[/url</a>] (both research programs), and SSP. (The non-Harvard one.)

No clue about social studies.

As for admissions, I don’t know too much about the selectivity of the science programs. All of the math programs have a few (generally about 10) hard-ish problems for you to solve and submit solutions for along with your application (which will require essay-like writing). I don’t know how good you are, since you don’t have an AMC score or anything, but from experience, you should be fine for at least AMSP as long as you don’t really suck.

ichheissemann · January 2, 2011, 8:47pm

Thanks, everyone.

@PrincipalV: I am very interested in grand strategy/economic policy, and will certainly looking into Yale Ivy Scholars.

@gangstergoose: They do have some nice ECs! But a very large part of the 50% that don’t drop out are college bound. Also, that list is nice. Furthermore, don’t you think it’s odd that YESS uses AA but CalTech doesn’t?

@energize: Our MATH faculty advisor showed me a practice AMC, and I had an idea about how to work all of the problems. I’m not saying I could work them all in the time given, nor that my methods were correct, but I think that I can achieve >120.

:)

10th-11th grade summer programs (chances?)

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