Hello,
My 11th grade daughter is lucky enough to get accepted into both summer internships, ASSIP (non-paid) and NIH (paid). She has a hard time trying to decide between the 2 programs since she likes both. One is near home (ASSIP) vs. one is 45 min - 1 hour commute (NIH). Which one should she choose ? She is doing biochem research at both programs, and is thinking of bio/premed major for the future.
Thank you in advance for any reply.
First of all, congratulations to your daughter for getting in to both programs!! I’m a senior from California who also applied to NIH, and hopefully I receive good news from them soon. I haven’t attended either program, but I can offer my two cents on what I think about the dilemma you may be facing right now.
There doesn’t seem to be a significant difference in prestige, cost, location, etc. between both programs. However, if financial stability is a worry and every bit of money is important, the obvious choice would be NIH because of their stipend.
If you are thinking about possibly securing a future summer program spot, I know that NIH has an undergraduate SIP as well. That’s the main reason I applied to the HS-SIP, so you may want to keep this in mind as well. I don’t know much about ASSIP and what doors it can open, though.
However, after going through the entire college application process, I’ve realized that at the end of the day, it truly is about what you gain out of your research experience that matters the most. The main factor I would strongly consider is the quality of research that your daughter will be able to conduct. Luckily, both programs do a great job of mentoring you and you can’t go wrong at either one, so just make sure that your daughter has been accepted into a lab/assigned to a mentor that she genuinely wants to work with. That way, she’ll be able to write about it during her applications with more easily and with more enthusiasm. It’s not all about college applications - if she really does enjoy the mentor and/or program she has been assigned to, she’ll be motivated to conduct more research in the field and potentially publish papers and do big things in the future.
BASICALLY: Sit down, talk with her, and let her make the final decision. She’s clearly an exceptional student and has the capability to excel at either program. It’s now just a question of what interests her more.
If you have any further questions about this you can reply here and I’ll probably get back to you in 2-3 days. Thank you for reading this, and I wish the very best for your daughter in the future!
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