<p>My daughter was accepted to this program, and we would like to know what kind of an experience students have had there. Information on the amount of lecture to hands-on experience, amount of time-in-seat the three classes a day represent, the approachability of the leaders (how much of an independent research idea the student must have upon arriving).</p>
<p>Congrats to your daughter! I am a student who went there last year so I can definitely answer some of your questions.</p>
<p>Basically the program is divided into 3 parts: classes, research, and social/living</p>
<p>Classes are mostly lecture/problems for math, lecture/assignments for comp sci, and for electives, physics is mostly lecture based while biochem is all lab based. Classes aren’t too taxing and you can definitely learn a lot. They are something to take seriously but not something to stress about! You take classes on M/W/F from about 8-9:30, 10-12 and 2-5, but not all the classes always lasted the entire allotted time. </p>
<p>From my experience, research is all hands-on. The student doesn’t need to have research experience before they come (I did, but my two labmates didn’t and we all did just fine) and you aren’t responsible for coming up with your own topic–you rank your top 6 choices from a list of projects created by labs who are willing to take YSP students themselves. You work about 15 hours a week in the lab (full-time on Tuesdays and Thursday) but there is some variation in the schedule. I did everything for my project myself and my lab mentor was great! </p>
<p>Not only do you develop a really strong friendship with your fellow participants fairly quickly (after about 4 days, I felt like I had known some of the people for years), but you get to learn from and grow with them too. As far as the leaders…there are 4 counselors who are past YSP participants (2 guys and 2 girls) and they do a great job with hanging with and helping the students. I’m just as close to the counselors as I am with some of the participants and I could ask them anything while I was there and I still feel comfortable enough with them to ask them stuff today. I still keep in touch with them today and most participants want to apply to be a counselor for the future!</p>
<p>I hope that helped…if you want anything else feel free to PM me with any other questions!</p>