Hey Everyone,
I wanted to contribute to this wonderful discussion about what SSI was like this past summer and my experience leading up to becoming one of the top 10 research papers that were published in the Summer STEM Institute Journal.
I believe that with every opportunity, what you put in is what you get out. This was clarified at the very beginning of the program. With that being said, SSI gives you all the resources you need to succeed - from inspirational and knowledgeable mentors to weekly programming problem sets - in completing a research project from scratch in a short time of 6 weeks.
One of the most challenging parts of SSI I experienced starting in the first week was the massive amount of previous material I needed to learn before conducting research. I barely held onto a steep learning curve of linear algebra, machine learning algorithms, and Python libraries. Luckily, I had an experienced mentor who was a machine learning engineer with a Masters from MIT to guide me every step of the way. We would call almost every night to clarify any questions I had so that I could have a solid conceptual understanding of fundamental material before going into my specific research project.
Personally, I had never done research before, so this was a great first experience. From doing literature reviews to staying up at night to program and debug to stay on track with my project, I put my all into these 6 weeks. In the end, I was able to finish my experimentation and research paper well before the end of the program.
Not only does SSI improve your academic abilities, but it also allowed me to meet amazing people from all over the nation through my lab group and weekend peer reviews. I still often talk to my friends from SSI, and I believe that my experiences there were well worth what I was able to gain.
Thanks again SSI staff for all your hard work and dedication in putting together this amazing summer program.