My DD is looking ahead to next summer and is torn between doing a math or science course at CTY (Advanced Robotics, Probability & Game Theory) and Johns Hopkins’ Engineering Innovation program. She loves CTY–has been to Carlisle twice–but thought maybe she “should” move on to something that might be more challenging/different. Would love to hear from anyone who has done EI about that experience. Will it really be that much more rigorous? And is it fun too?
Thanks!
DEFINITELY CHOOSE ENGINEERING INNOVATIONS! I completed the summer program this summer at CSU Fullerton and I definitely recommend it! What separates it from other engineering summer programs is that it covers many topics of engineering (civil, mechanical, chemical, computer, etc.) in the span of one month. Actually, this summer program is a semester-long intro to engineering course they offer in JHU collapsed all into one month. You can receive college credits if you get an A or a B in the summer program. Since it is a sped-up college course, it is definitely quite rigorous and there is quite a bit of knowledge thrown at you every day. There is homework every weekday, consisting of formal lab reports, projects, or practice quizzes. In addition to homework, there are weekly quizzes and there is a program final that counts for most of your grade in the course. Personally I struggled a lot during this program and there were nights when I slept at 3 am. I think taking a physics course before this program would’ve really helped me, especially during the truss analysis unit.
I don’t think the difficulty of this program negatively affects how fun the program is. Even though I stayed until 3 am to finish lab reports a couple of times, surprisingly I enjoyed it all the way through. I think in order to enjoy the program, you really need to love what you’re doing or else the work might seem a bit overwhelming.
Okay this program is not ALL brain work. I think the funnest part of the program was building a mini-spaghetti bridge during the last two weeks and overloading them until failure on the last day. But order to get the most fun out of the program, you need to apply to the residential program! I was a residential student, and I made friends with people from all over the world! Literally. My two best friends from camp were a girl from Spain and a girl from South Korea. The international atmosphere is also something special about this program that you can’t find anywhere else. Our RA’s took us on trips every Saturday, and one of the highlights of this program was going to Disneyland on the Saturday before the program finals (don’t worry, it’s a take home final).
The instructors are all amazing teachers and are super approachable. They are are very knowledgeable and passionate about the subjects they teach. Also, there are only five girls out of the twenty students per class if you were wondering.
I hope this helped!