NJ Governor's School in the Sciences (NJGSS) 2020

halocline
Thu, 21 May 2020 04:58:10 +0000

@palm12312 All good!! (in retrospect i wrote a lot I hope some of this does help though!!)

I think the most important thing for right now is making sure you can get your school’s nomination (some schools require STEM teacher nominations, others require you to fill out an app, less competitive ones just need you to talk to you guidance counselor in junior fall, etc). I know my grade has a lot of kids who are qualified and wanted to apply, but small schools can only nominate 1 student for each gov school, so people are barred from it from the get-go.

As for the application, it’s hard for me to consider what aspects lead to the acceptance because I had honestly thought it’d be a reject since I’m an ORM in a non-target region, I don’t have research experience, and my extracurriculars are generic (scioly, math league, columbia shp, etc). However, I think the main things that lead to my acceptance are:

1. good LORs (I think this was definitely the biggest factor!!!)

2. good PSAT score (1510; 750RW/760M)

3. good GPA/decent course load

4. decent-to-good essays
there’s a personal essay and an essay that’s more formal/article-like, so I think there’s a place for all different types of writers to shine, and it definitely helped me since I struggled through the first essay but had so many ideas for the second

Of course, if your brother has the crazy extracurriculars and the big research projects, it’s not to say that he won’t get in – he probably has a better chance! I just wanted to say that even without those seemingly unachievable things, if he has good relationships with teachers and a way to convey a passion for science through his essays, there’s definitely a way!