When I was applying to summer programs I couldn’t find much information about Catalyst on CC so I thought a review might be helpful! I just came back from the program a couple weeks ago so I wanted to write this while it’s still fresh in my head.
On the first day we had dinner and did ice breakers. The next day, we had Introduction to ____ Engineering sessions. In the afternoon we were split into groups to design a new mode of transportation. That was one of my favorite activities. The following days we had Introduction sessions in the mornings and field sessions in the afternoons. A lot of the field sessions were avareage or bored us to sleep. Our focus was on civil engineering so the field sessions revolved around the different fields within it. The big “research project” we had was a slideshow condensing the information we learned about a certain topic of civil engineering. The presentations repeated themselves so much! The biggest complaint from the program assistants and the participants was that we did not do enough hands-on projects. I expect the program to change next year because of it.
Aside from not having a lot of projects, the social aspect of the program was amazing. The majority of program assistants (PA’s) were grad or PhD students. It was so much fun to interact with top engineering students. Also, we had personalized lessons from Cornell professors!! They always gave us their emails and encouraged us to contact them if we had more questions. My presentation group emailed one professor at 11pm to ask for some resources for our slide show and he immediately responded with tons of articles. The program really gave us so much attention.
The best part of all was that I only paid $75 for the program. I had received $1000 in merit aid (didn’t apply for financial aid). But $500 plus a plane ticket to Ithaca would’ve been over $1k so my parents spent a long time deliberating. I waited until the very last day to commit and explained my situation to the head of the program through email. She offered me a full tuition scholarship and gave my parents the rest of the weekend to decide! The majority of people I talked to had $1k merit scholarships and a handful had all expenses paid through financial aid. Oh and we all get application fee waivers so that’s another plus.
I applied to both CURIE (all girls) and CATALYST. I was only accepted to Catalyst. If you’re a woman of color and you happen to be accepted to both I would really recommend Catalyst! The diversity was amazing! But I am a little bit biased lol. The try to get 50 kids per program. I believe 415-425 people applied.
State: CA
Ethnicity: Latina
Race: Black and White
ACT score I submitted: Composite 29. English 31. Reading 34. Science 24. Math 28 (the bare minimum for merit scholarship consideration)
PSAT: English 710. Math 650
Relevant Courses (can’t remember if they asked for this): AP Calc, AP Environmental Science
My biggest piece of advice is don’t let your insecurities stop you from applying! The people with me had a large range of test scores from 1200 - 1600. I was one of the few people who didn’t take AP Bio, Chem, or Computer Science. However, that was never an issue for me when I was there. I hope this is useful for future applicants.