Does anyone have any idea how competitive the ION (Institute on Neuroscience) summer scholars program is? (The one for high school students - not the teacher one). They are taking 10 students for the program but did not say how many applicants there were this year. I’m wondering if anyone has any idea from previous years?
Here is the link -
http://www.cbn-atl.org/education/ion.shtml
Thanks -
I participated in the program last summer, and they told us about 100 applied in 2014. They took 11 people our year, and they took three from my school, including myself (Douglas County HS).
Thank you. For any future potential applicants, this summer (2015) they said they received over 180 applicants, interviewed about 20 and selected 10. 8 of the 10 are rising HS seniors and the other 2 are rising college freshmen.
How did they contact you for an interview, by phone, email? About when was the interview?
In 2015 an email notification of selection for an interview was sent on March 24th. The 4 interview days were at the very end of March and early April and notification of selection was on April 13th. Hope this helps!
Can you please tell me about what the interviews were like? What should a girl wear? And were the mostly questions pertaining to your knowledge of neuroscience or more about your personal intentions with the program/interest in neuroscience?
@banafa1 - I’m the mom - my D wore a very plain dress to her interview. I took her to the interview location and we saw another girl leaving wearing a nice pants outfit. D said the 2 interviewers asked her about the things on her resume. D asked them if they were looking specifically for students with previous research and/or neuroscience experience and they said definitely not, that they are trying to introduce neuroscience to students who have not had any experience in the field. FWIW, when she interviewed, my D had only one very brief science-related extracurricular activity on her resume so she was definitely more of the humanities type of student.
At the end of the interview, the interviewer walked my D back out to the lobby area (I was trying to hide in a corner so as not to be noticable) and came over and shook my hand. I guess I didn’t do a great job of being unobtrusive. I did see at least one other parent who came into the lobby area with his kid to wait for the interview.
Good luck - it was a phenomenal program and I can’t overstate what a positive experience it was for my D.
Thank you so much for the response.
Waitlisted!! Now just patiently waiting for an accepted student to get a better offer somewhere else so that I can go :))