<p>Are there any possible scholarships for this program?</p>
<p>Yeah, the thing about the History course is that it's History of the Civil War. I know so much about the Civil War I probably won't need to do half of the readings. Maybe I'll take some Government course instead, although Psychology is suddenly sounding appealing.</p>
<p>LOL it really is an interesting class. My friends loved psycholgy. The class I would reccommend is biomedical ethics. I took it and I thought it was the best class and I did very little work in it. All there is, is a midterm and final that are short take home essays. The readings are very short and I didnt even do them. Take it, trust me.</p>
<p>Yeah, the problem is I couldn't care less about biomedicine or ethics :). Which of the Psych courses did you take?</p>
<p>I'm thinking about taking Calc 3 and either Psych or Biomedical Ethics...is this course load too hard...which is the better course to take out of the second two.</p>
<p>I would say taht both psychology and biomedical ethics will give you an easy course to be taken along with your difficult math course.</p>
<p>What do you think of astronomy? Hard/Medium/Easy?</p>
<p>Are there any financial aid offerings for this program?</p>
<p>From the kids there I got the impression that astronomy is alot of fun and is easy. I think they went to the observatories late at night and did alot of other cool stuff.</p>
<p>Yes there is financial aid but it is very limited so you must apply as early as possible and you need to be found eligible for it, which is hard considering their limited amount of money for summer students.</p>
<p>"and one of the astronomy courses."</p>
<p>If you care (know) anything about astronomy, stay away from the fundamentals of the universe course. If you want to take it as a blow off class, it works well. You have to do a project at the end though. I spent four hours on the project and a couple across the semester on homework(yes, total) and got an A-. You get assigned a bunch of reading form a so-so text book, which you don't have to do. You get to choose like 3/6 questions to do on the test, so even if you don't pick up half the stuff you're fine. All the lectures are recorded, don't watch them but if you miss class tell the prof you're going to. I skipped a class to see the premier of Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, haha. It felt like a middle school course.. ugh. As far as "being in the observatory." Nope. The whole course I literally got a 5 second glimpse of Jupiter and its moons. All the 2 hour labs aren't observing sessions... they're damn simulations you have to run on the computer and record endless pages of data, and then do elementary calculations across columns of it. And yes, you'll be doing this until 11:00 while everyone else is having fun. Trust me, skip this, pick up something intersting, save yourself the joke and the time.</p>
<p>My other course was Calc 2; bad prof, amazing TA- best teacher I've ever known, including professors and HS teachers. Standard Stuart text, not very advanced but we did get into second order differential equations. Be careful, harsh grading on the exams. Integrating with respect to the wrong axis for problem 1 on the first exam dropped me from a 91 to a 71 and dropped me to a B+ in the class. </p>
<p>Take their advice, shop for classes starting Monday. Register for classes early, for housing late (last year the latest got the best dorms/rooms, but that was because they opened up Adams last, they might fill Adams first this year if they expect more ppl, who knows). Check out the Samurai class, really interesting, great lecturer, but its capped at 20 so you have to get in early (I couldn't).</p>
<p>If you want to spend a great summer in Cambridge, with almost no rules, etc. (don't go as a rising Junior or you'll have an early curfew), make a lot of friends and basically have something simliar to a college experience, definately go. If you're looking for something that will get you into Harvard, try other programs.. RSI, SSP, etc. </p>
<p>Feel free to ask any more questions...</p>
<p>The problem with taking the non-Fundamentals Astronomy course is that I haven't had any physics course, even the very basics, ever. I'm taking AP Physics C next year, but that's not going to help me for this summer. The other Astronomy course recommends HS physics, so I'm not sure it's even a possibility for me. I've always been really interested in Astronomy, but I don't have much of a background in either Astronomy or Physics. And I'd be going as a rising Senior.</p>
<p>I'm open to people recommending anything to me as far as SSP goes.</p>
<p>I think the one that recomends physics is the universe one. At least it was last year. If you have a decent understanding of math you won't have any trouble, but I really recommend taking something other than astronomy. You'll learn more from watching a couple of hours of the science channel than you would in that course. These aren't Harvard courses, my book definately wasn't used during the year. I went into the course because I too was interested in astronomy, but definately wished I hadn't taken it.</p>
<p>They have a physics class that's pretty much the same as Physics C, but since you're taking that next year I suppose there's no point, unless you could take a more advanced course at your HS. Other 8 unit sciences- Bio, Chem, Orgo- are pretty tough but worth it (ok, maybe not Orgo). I'm not sure what you're interested in, but they have a variety of courses, from many history classes to writing seminars to economics. If you had any specific ones in mind I could tell you what I know about them.</p>
<p>(Btw, "SSP" at the end of my other post was referring to Summer Science Program; sorry, that was probably a bit confusing.)</p>
<p>ieatglue, I'd recommend SSP if you're interested in astronomy. You actually do a research project and take observations on a plate.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ssp.org%5B/url%5D">http://www.ssp.org</a></p>
<p>It'll be a much better astronomy experience than what an introductory course at Harvard Summer School can offer.</p>
<p>Summer Science Program looks pretty intense - lectures in astronomy, physics, calculus and programming. None of which I have any background whatsoever in. While I'm sure it would be a more valuable astronomy experience than the Harvard Summer School course, it seems like it would be incredibly difficult to try to learn 4 new subjects over the course of a summer (although I will have had some Calculus by then).</p>
<p>From what I understand they assume no background knowledge in those areas, so you should be fine.</p>
<p>to answer the fin.aid, you get 1/2 off tuition, so it'll be around 6k-7k (air fair inclusive)</p>
<p>How do you get that aid?</p>
<p>What about history of art and architecture classes at SSP?</p>
<p>Do you actually learn what you would learn during the school year? I want to take 2 Calc classes, but not if it would be a waste of time. I'd actually like to learn something so I can take more advanced courses locally when I get back.</p>