It’s more than just the ability to pay for some of these programs. It’s also taking away from paid work opportunities during the summer, plus costs and logistics of transportation to/from, or needing reliable wifi and a computer in the home if remote.
In my neck of the woods we found that the programs with generous funding were the most competitive. There were a few companies that sponsored summer internships but they had their own version of institutional priorities and only pulled from certain schools.
My D had a grand total of one classmate who did research outside of school. My D was the runner up for that position and instead spent the summer working at a sub shop and doing lots of community service volunteering, including leading a work group of other students for a major project. They had similar outcomes in college admission and had a lot of overlap with their school list.
This is only one of about a thousand other ways wealthy kids are advantaged – from better prenatal care, to better nutrition, to more being read to, to hearing thousands more words as young children, to better schools, better teachers, more exposure to opportunities, etc etc etc – but I suspect we are drifting off topic.
Perhaps we are drifting off topic, but you raise an interesting point.
I agree with your earlier point that wealth enables more enrichment thus yielding better SAT scores, but felt that it was missing something (e.g., all of the activities I described were available to all regardless of financial ability). But, here, I think you put your finger on the issue and I think you frame it wonderfully.
I appreciate the information for sure. I was one of those kids who did not have a financial backstop but made it through college on my own. I do believe there are opportunities, yes maybe competitive, but that is what education is a way for people to excel or not. The best and the brightest even if limited by finances have lots of programs that would love to cultivate and grow their potential.
The world is a rough place. You have to make your opportunities happen in research, college, high school, etc. People who are exceptional do not live a passive existence.
I showed up in college and didn’t even realize what my large, urban public HS hadn’t taught me. (1100 kids in my graduating class… do you think the guidance counselors were busy crafting the perfect college list? Ha ha ha).
One of the kids on my hall freshman year said her dad was a banker. I was confused- from her lifestyle they appeared affluent. I knew bankers from home and they were mostly SAH parents who had gone back to work after the kids started HS to earn extra money. I finally realized that being a bank teller wasn’t the same as being an investment banker (the dad was head of M&A for an institution I had never heard of. And I didn’t know what M&A was, or that Goldman Sachs didn’t take deposits and issue savings books).
The world is indeed a rough place but pretending that disadvantaged kids can somehow figure out the world on their on with no adult or institutional help is mean, don’t you think? A kid in a rural HS where the last math class is pre-calc and the only lab science is Chem is supposed to know what the Physics Olympiad is or how to participate in AIME?
No pretending on my part… I was one of those kids.
I would venture that most 18 year olds do not know what an investment banker is or does.
Nothing mean in my statement intended.
I think there are internships and there are “internships.”
My son’s school requires all Juniors to do a month long internship as part of school curriculum. One girl went to UCSD and basically did supplies for the hospital. Another in his group did animal dissection. My son did IT, so he got to craw in basements and route cables and tell people to reboot their computers.
We, having been thru this, usually know what HS kids are capable of. Research doesn’t need to be first author on a cancer curing article or inventing a new fusion reactor. IMO, college cares about that the kid did something productive towards their goal. In my days, no one knows anything about their chosen career or major and you get to say “I don’t know why I wanted to major in X.” Now a days, every application asks the “Why this” as well as “why us.”
Any research towards that is helpful. Overly elaborate, unless you can show a very clear understanding in a plausible role, may be perceived as BS.
I did have a mentor, who enlisted his kids into his research and got them published in his papers. He also applied several patents under their names. But I have no doubt his kids did actual work (data analysis and background research for articles, as well as some of the writing parts).
IMO college care about what you have done outside the class to demonstrate an understanding and interest in what the students want to study. What you actually do probably doesn’t matter as much. The truly gifted, everyone will already have know and met in conferences and meetings and they will know who whose kids are and they get recruited.
i’m currently a high school senior who has done research, internships, and fellowships throughout my four years, and while i generally agree with the previous comments about not doing anything that requires a payment or something like that, i disagree with some comments about high schoolers not being ‘capable’ of doing real research. If your son can find a professor willing to take him in and add him to their research project (whether its lab work w/ cells or he’s allowed to do his own project on the side), I’d honestly say it’s a great opportunity. I personally did scientific research on Alzhiemer’s Disease, and while I don’t exactly want to focus on STEM in college, it was a really great experience for me in terms of the research itself. You don’t need to do BU Rise, RSI, NIH, or anything like that if you don’t get it—finding your own opportunities by reaching out to professors and such is just as respectable imo! shows drive. good luck
but as other commenters have said, a summer job is genuinely just as respectable. i just wanted to clarify a bit about research in high school b/c that’s something i have experience with and if your son is genuinely interested, then it’s a cool option
