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<p>SSP financial aid is not guaranteed, the amount available is limited, and it is awarded on the basis of merit as well as need. Also, most parents who’d need financial aid just don’t consider sending their child away to a private program for the summer, especially since even in middle-class families, juniors and seniors are often expected to spend the summer working. The students in SSP do not reflect the economic mix of the country – or even of the Harvard College applicant pool. So giving an edge to those kids would definitely work against the College’s economic-diversity recruiting goals.</p>
<p>SSP is a decent program, but it just doesn’t provide the opportunities you describe for the College to look at the kids “under a microscope.” Most of the courses offered don’t involve the kind of individual scrutiny and intensive writing that would allow for a better academic evaluation than high schools provide. Since the kids are only in two classes at a time, even a straight-A performance doesn’t tell you how they’ll handle a full schedule (a high school semester with 5 AP’s is a much better approximation of the Harvard environment than SSP). The extracurriculars (choir, summer Crimson, etc.) are far less competitive to enter and less enriching than their term-time counterparts, and probably less so than what most high schools offer. The vast majority of the kids are able to make friends and behave themselves in the dorms, so that doesn’t distinguish them, either. I suppose they could have the summer proctors identify kids who were really extraordinary in terms of social skills or kindness, but chances are that those kids will make an equally strong impression on their high schools, and it’ll end up in the application. In sum, SSP might be a useful way of weeding out a few kids who are still very immature, but I don’t think it would do much to help the adcoms pick out the stars.</p>