Effect of Siemens Competition on Admission

haavain
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:12:21 +0000

Umm… theres only 300 of those bad boys a year so i dont see how a total pool of say 75000 applicants can have so many. (HYPSM probably get like 120000 kids but when u take away cross applicants, id guestimate 75000 different applicants).



But Harvard (for example) has less than 2000 kids in each class. Relative to that, 300 is a lot, and Harvard can’t fill its class with science geeks–they also have to get the athletes and the musicians and the poets and the journalists, etc. Not to mention the legacies, URMs, development candidates, and kids from underrepresented states. I would guess most Siemens semifinalists/finalists apply to HYPMS, but HYPMS can only take a fraction of them. And they have so many kids to choose from, for so few spots. That’s what I mean.



Also, I’m planning on pursuing a non-science major, so I’m not sure what effect that fact will have.



I think that’s a harder sell, then. Which isn’t to say that everything you pursue in high school has to be related to your major or career, just that a Siemens or Intel award lends itself easily to a “the science guy/girl” storyline, and obviously you can’t do that.

There are still plenty of benefits, though. Making Siemens RF means you’ve done something that’s beyond the imagining of the vast majority of highschoolers. That says a lot about you.