Hello, My D is a junior in school. Is top 3% out of a class of approx 1000. She has a 2370 on her SAT on her only attempt a and got a 225 SI on her PSAT results that came out yesterday. She has done all her schooling in the US but is still not a Permanent Resident, is and has always been a legal resident. Could you please suggest some summer programs that she can look at maybe the top 5 or 6 that one would suggest if they had to do it. Biology is her fav subject, is good in tech too. Appreciate the feedback. She has taken 2 AP classes her sophomore year, has 5 AP classes this year and plans to take another 5 next year. EC’s are not great but she volunteers with school clubs (Interact,Mu Alpha Theta), teaches Spanish to home schooled kids and loves choir. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks.
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Here is one link you might try:
http://www.ivyplanners.com/documents/SummerPrograms-IvyPlanners.pdf.
It would help if it was clear what impact, if any, money has on her/your plans and where you live. Some summer programs are fairly expensive and some are either free or very affordable. This summer is a great opportunity to shore up her EC’s although it’s late in the game. We live in the Chicago area and U.Chicago has a great program for gifted math students - for example. The best programs are not necessarily the ones taking place at places like Harvard. The best programs are selective rather than expensive efforts to fill dorm rooms in summer. College courses may be appropriate. Is there a major research institute nearby she could volunteer at. You might find that you/she has to actively seek out and create an internship or research opportunity. Depending upon where she wants to go to college, she may really need to beef up her EC’s. I say this as a parent with a kid who had a perfect ACT score, solid grades and relatively weak ECs. The level of EC’s required to get into the Ivy League, Stanford, or MIT is quite frankly kind of scary. You read the accomplishments of these kids and you would think they were a post-doctoral fellow
Thank You for the response. Money is not really an issue, we are in Texas and she is fine with going to UT. I am trying to get her to expand her list of colleges and then decide if she still wants to go to UT rather than saying UT is the only college she will go to. If it is good we can spend the money. Want to try and get her thinking about exploring something that will let her decide on a college major. Is trying to decide between bio related career or tech related career. Was thinking that if I could send her to a program that has one of those 2 that can help her decide on her major.She has been very particular about saying she wants to enjoy her life in addition to school so she was not very hung up about the academic EC’s, she was more interested in volunteering at church rather than getting into sci oly even though she knew it would hurt when it came to college.
Some science research programs which your daughter might want to consider include:
- Clark Scholars program at Texas Tech. 7 week fully funded program plus a stipend. Multiple research areas, not all in science.
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/honors/academicsandenrichment/affiliatedandhighschool/clarks/
- Simons Summer Research Program. 6+ week fully funded program. STEM focus.
http://www.stonybrook.edu/simons/
- Summer Student Program at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine. 10 weeks fully funded plus a stipend. Biological research, particularly with a genetics and genomics focus.
These are all highly competitive, selective and prestigious programs. There are tons of other less competitive and more general programs, depending on what your daughter wants.
The Women in Technology Program (WTP) at MIT is an excellent summer program for women exploring engineering but it’s probably too late to apply to unless you really get on it right away. It’s attendees get a good leg up in getting into colleges. My D did it several years ago and she came out of it with many friends who today are tops at schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and of course MIT. They may also have some requirement about US citizens or green cards, not sure because there seemed to be several non-US schooled students in the program. Very selective in general and not many places.
Go on the Summer Program board and you’ll find a bunch of other programs for the summer after junior year. Some are free. In addition to the programs mentioned above: RSI, MITES (if a minority), SSP, University of Iowa, Michigan State among others.
Girls Who Code is another possible option.
Thank You all very much for your responses. After going through She is going to try for SSP, Girls who code and Welch. Will see if she can apply for the MIT one also. Thank You again for all of your responses and good luck to all of you.
If you want to make sure she has a program of some kind to attend this summer, she should have some backup programs as well. It is easy to get shut out of the highly competitive programs even with great grades and test scores. It can be a little tricky because there is no standardization of acceptance and response dates.
D16 wants to go into medicine and had Northwestern on her list of colleges to apply.
She attended the Insight into Medicine seminar at NU this summer and loved it:
So…D16 decided to submit an ED app to Wash U and got in, so now we will consider sending D19 to the following summer program (pre-medical institute) at Wash U:
https://summerexperiences.wustl.edu/premedical
We figure D16 may be doing summer school so it would be good for her sister to do the pre-med summer institute at the same time.