<p>A teacher i knew was our region representative for the MTI RSI and he could choose one person to go to RSI. He offered to send me, but I told him since I want to be a linguistics major, I wanted to do internships and such rather than RSI. So he sent another person, and I’m doing my translating internship at a good company, and I will be interning in 3 weeks in a newspaper company (I’m also interested in journalism). Was this a better use of my time, or should I have gone to RSI because you know, it’s prestigious…</p>
<p>PTon isn’t interested in people who chase prestige. Stop looking over your shoulder and push fwd. If the RSI pgm was truly your desire, you’d gotten it. You got what you wanted and now are having 2nd thoughts. Stop quibbling and worrying about what people think about your choices. PTon wants explorers, innovators, people willing to chase things for the sake of the chase vs. worried about their image. Don’t be a lemming. </p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>bump! </p>
<p>LOL: I guess you didn’t like my first answer. Since really there are only two options and you’re pining away to hear both, here you go: (just pretend it’s from someone else)</p>
<p>Man! RSI would be GREAT on you app. You really messed up. You’ve got to pack your resume w/everything and anything to get a leg up on your HYP apps!</p>
<p>^ I hope you can laugh at the absurdity of this post. Please relax. Certainly no one looking to apply to HYP can be confident. But that’s OK. If you’re anywhere close to being a viable HYP applicant then I can say with certainty that you’ll be blessed with an incredibly fruitful and successful collegiate career – wherever you attend. You’re fine and will be fine, too. GL</p>
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Come on, T26, surely you know better. Academically qualified recruited athletes can apply with supreme confidence.</p>
<p>Srry – they are a separate discussion – I fail to remember them sometimes</p>
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<p>I’ve never heard of such a thing. There is an entire RSI selection committee that reviews the applications and makes the decisions. The acceptance rate to RSI is said to be about 3% from a pool consisting of some of the top math and science kids in the world. I have a hard time believing that an acceptance could just be handed to someone who is interested in linguistics and not math and science. The essays are extremely tough and the candidates must have innovative ideas for research in two distinct fields. RSI has to be able to pair up a prospective candidate with a mentor who is an expert in the field the candidate will be doing their research in so that is also a major consideration in their selection process.</p>
<p>And yes, in my humble opinion, if all you care about is college admissions then turning down a chance to participate in RSI to do an internship in linguistics was a mistake. If, on the other hand, you are currently doing something you deeply care about and you realize as long as you are true to yourself the dots will always connect themselves then no - you didn’t make a mistake.</p>
<p>I think OP may live abroad. RSI does take 30 internationals which are nominated by selection committees within those countries which probably have less standard procedures. Maybe for some countries, it’s just a matter of whether you have the connections or not.</p>
<p>I agree with the posters above. There is no need to look back. That won’t do you anything useful in this case. Besides if your interest is in linguistics, I don’t think RSI matters much.</p>
<p>Do what you are passionate about. Colleges can tell the difference between people who pack their college applications for the sake of admissions and those who love what they do; honestly, those types of applications don’t normally go very well unless they’re dealt with very, VERY well. For example, a student in my grade absolutely jammed his application with prestige and awards and honors; he probably played close to 3 sports, was president of at least 6 clubs, won national awards playing 2 instruments, and won so many science awards on the national/state level that I can’t even count them on two hands. I was shocked to some extent to hear that he had gotten rejected from all of the top 10–and naturally, anything could have gone wrong that I wasn’t aware of–but to some extent it could be attributed to his major laundry list of ECs that really spelt nothing out for himself. No one passion was extraordinarily defined and it must have just appeared to be a large jumble of “stuff” to the admissions officers. Meanwhile, classmates at my school hit the top 10 with only a few clubs/honors under their belts, and they seemed to be geniunely happy about doing what they enjoyed. So no ragrets, just continue moving on and doing the things that appeal to you, not the college application.</p>
<p>I decided not to apply for RSI because a) I found out about it a week from the deadline and risked annoying all of my potential rec letter writers, and b) I wanted to pursue independent research that summer. I still got into Princeton, if only by the hair on my neck, so honestly, I don’t think it matters unless you were really into math/science. What’s the fun in doing something just for the college app and not for your own interests? You’ll be fine! :)</p>
<p>RSI does provide a ticket into some of the top schools. In the college batch of 2016, 17 of 20 SCEA applicants were accepted by Harvard. Not sure how international RSI applicants fare but I would assume they are considered pretty elite.</p>
<p>If OP truly had a chance at RSI, he/she blew it! :D</p>
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<p>Eh, it may be RSI that does this, but the kids who get into RSI are pretty unlike the average applicant. As someone above noted, RSI has a 3% acceptance rate (HYP SCEA is ~20%), and I’d venture to guess that RSI has a more self selective applicant pool than even HYP. The RSI folk I know personally are talented even by the standards of the kinds of people who are HYP competitive.</p>
<p>They are all aiming for top schools which is why 20 out of 45 applied SCEA to Harvard. If they were self selective about the MIT type of environment, they should have applied to MIT instead.</p>
<p>In the end, it all comes down to validation of one’s credentials. If RSI took someone, they must be good, if TASP took someone, they must be good and so on. If they won a research prize to top it off, all the better.</p>
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<p>They’re not self selective about the MIT kind of environment. They’re self selective in the sense that they heard of + thought they would like + thought they’d be capable of getting into RSI. You’d have to be at a very strong school and at the tippy top % of that school to have heard of RSI and think you have a shot at it. On the other hand, ~35K people fall in this pool each year at Harvard.</p>
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<p>I do think that some schools (especially MIT and to a lesser extent Princeton/Yale) and some employers (e.g. D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, etc.) think this way, but in my experience Harvard is generally not one of these places. Having seen Olympiad winners, ISEF winners, Rickoids, etc. both accepted and rejected at H/P/M, I’d say Harvard’s fairly decent about making up its own mind about students rather than relying heavily on “signaling” credentials.</p>
<p>I agree, RSI was only barely circulated through my school, and in my knowledge, one kid got in years ago because he’d heard about the program from someone else. It’s possible that a lot of talent is hidden because some schools don’t know to inform students about it. Besides, RSI is not a life or death situation…nothing “secures” you a position in a top college. You could very well be one of the few who do not get into HYPSM. It isn’t the only thing colleges consider. I’d recommend it if you really did have an interest in the sciences, but if you were, like the OP, pursuing a linguistics major, then it is an odd addition to your college resume.</p>
<p>^TigerInCambridge nailed the last paragraph so hard it went through the wall, and that is entirely true. This past year, I have seen classmates get into HYPSM without any top research or even nationally acclaimed awards, and I have seen people with the most glittering, beautiful resumes get rejected from all of them. It’s not completely about the gilded layers, it’s about the person underneath all of that. Let’s face it, a lot of people who apply are smart. How to distinguish SmartPerson A from B? If you can’t present yourself as a student who genuinely does these activities to learn and further your knowledge, and can only be seen as a list, then I guess it’s just a game of chance from there. It works for some, fails for others. IMO, the biggest scam is the self-perpetuating idea that ONLY huge awards and stuffed resumes can get you in.</p>
<p>Yes you definitely should have gone to RSI to boost your chances. RSI is arguably the most prestigious and selective summer program for high school students in the united states. Not only do you get the opportunity to do research with MIT and Harvard grad students and postdocs (which is not limited to STEM), but the program can also lead to international recongition in contests like Intel STS and ISEF and Siemens Science Competition. Another benefit is that you have a research paper to submit to colleges as a supplement after successfully completing RSI. So in terms of boosting your chances you definitely should have gone to RSI. It was an amazing opportunity and colleges love to make a big deal out of students maximizing every opportunity they get. But then again they will never have to know you turned down RSI ;)</p>
<p>Thanks everyone 
I was feeling horrible about it (and still do after reading some of these posts) but some of these really made me feel a lot better about it… well what’s done is done, and since they don’t know i could have gone to RSI (thanks Harvard98!) hopefully i can do something even better than that </p>
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<p>I heard there were 6-10k juniors applied for the 50 spots in U.S.</p>
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<p>I feel the same way too and Harvard seems to be the least predictable. However, even Harvard is not above yield protection and it knows it may not be the first choice for those STEM students. I heard from a student who interviewed at Harvard. The interviewer told him straightforwardly the last two admittees from the groups he interviewed both went to other schools, and he’s probably embarrassed or got heat from admissions that he said his first priority was to make sure whoever he recommands will definitely go to Harvard if admitted. So if you feel confident about your qualification and think you can get your pick of schools at the end, you are out, even if you are indeed passionate about your work. Harvard rather picks a less qualified to make sure the person does go to the school. Now that happens at all top schools. Based on your credentials, they have a preconceived notion about roughly where you can get in and which schools you would prefer. Now the student did get into the HYPSM group and Harvard was the only rejection there. But if those don’t pan out, you may fall pretty hard because the second tier schools like Brown/Northwestern/WashU/Rice probably don’t want you either since they don’t want to be second choices.</p>