Hi everyone!
As school is about to end this year, I wanted to try to find some summer programs to attend this year that helps on my college applications. I’m am interested in engineering (mainly mechanical) and some CS. I recently received my decision from MIT BWSI and was sadly rejected, so I want to try to find some programs that still accept this late or a program that is open in my senior year. There are some that I’m looking at like the BU Summer Challenge and Honors Program, but as they’re paid I’m a bit hesitant to apply, same goes for the WPI Outreach Program, as of now I’ve been accepted for: Inspirit AI (Currently doing) and NSLC to UC Berkeley, but some research say that it’s not worth it on college apps. I’m also open to internships(paid/unpaid) and scholership programs related to my interests (for reference, I’m located in Midlothian, VA), same for volunteering. I’ve tried looking myself, but the options listed are always above $2k. Any and all recommendations and advice would be great!
Sorry for the long read and thanks for reading this far 
Summer programs shouldn’t be about college apps. First and foremost, they should be about you having a good, interesting experience. Forget about college apps. Decide what YOU want to do and how YOU want to spend your summer. It may be a summer program, it may be a summer job (scooping ice cream, flipping burgers, babysitting neighborhood kids), it may be volunteering at your local food bank or walking dogs at an animal shelter, it may be reading and writing and spending time with friends, it may be taking a summer college class through dual enrollment. What do you WANT to do? What would your ideal summer look like, in terms of being interesting and fun and productive? Forget about apps and just do you. If you do that, the apps will take care of themselves.
Thanks, I know what I want to do but I just don’t know what companies/organizations do it.
See if you can get a summer job nearby. Mech E kids are useful summer employees at manufacturing firms.
If you have another summer next year, look at STEP at Purdue and Operational Catapult at Rose Hulman.
Perhaps they still have openings - you can look.
Do not attend a program for admission help - that’s not what it’s for.
What it’s for is to expose you and perhaps confirm your interest.
A summer job at McDonalds can help your college admission though.
Good luck.
OP, since you mentioned WPI as an option, one of my kids (now an ME major) did the WPI Frontiers program a few years ago and had a positive experience. This was during the pandemic so online was the only option. He took their Introduction to Computer Aided Design - CAD (ES 1310) course which at the time was taught using SolidWorks. This particular course was asynchronous with a few live sessions, so he was able to work it around other summer activities. After he finished the course he was able to easily pass a lower-level SolidWorks certification exam which he added to his resume and was able to land an internship at an engineering firm while still in high school.
Landing that first internship can be tough, so learning a widely-deployed CAD software package through the course was definitely worthwhile for him. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, he was also admitted to WPI the following year although he ended up choosing to attend elsewhere.
As others have mentioned, summer programs generally (aside from a few exceptions like RSI, TASS, SSP, and a few other similar level programs) are not going to really move the needle by themselves for purposes of college admission. But if you do them at a particular school you are targeting, they could definitely help with content for the “why” essay many schools require.
Hi!
Thanks for responding! Could you name the firm if you don’t mind, I want to look into it. I applied and got accepted to major in Computer Science and minor in STEM teaching workshop so I’ll see if I can find a similar test and land a internship similar to your son, as I want to have a internship experience to see what it’s like.
Thanks
Sorry, local firm so would not be helpful to someone living in VA.
I would focus on small companies local to you – internships at national companies are much more difficult to land even for freshman and sophomores in college, and almost impossible for a HS student unless you have a connection on the inside.
For CS, maybe volunteering at a local not-for-profit that needs help with their website? CS internships at larger, well-known companies in many cases require getting past the online assessment (OA), which typically includes coding problems. So experience with competitive programming in HS and college is a plus, or you can also use services like LeetCode to drill on your own.
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As of now, here’s what I have:
- BWSI (Rejected)
- WPI POP (Engineering & STEM Teaching)(Accepted)
- Summer Job (had one for about a year now)
- Purdue STEP (Applying)
- NSLC @ Berkeley (Accepted)
But as of this summer, I’m only available the month of July as I’ll be out of the country, but any suggestions and opinions are welcome as I want to make the most of my summer instead of staying home all summer.
Ahhh gotcha, thanks Ill look into it!