I applied to the Stanford High School Summer College & MIT Launch (RD) & looking for internships (not really certain). I was thinking that HSSC can be my “safety choice” so I don’t end up watching Netflix for the entire summer. But now I’m getting really worried because I actually have no idea if HSSC is competitive or not (even its REALLY expensive, the office is trying to show that they are super competitive and I dont really believe that).
Please chance me on both MIT Launch and HSSC… so I dont freak out… thanks in advance (CC should support markdown)
Sophomore
Cum GPA 4.00W (agh its bad because I took no honors in freshman year but self-studied 2 APs) ~3.78UW from a really competitive private school
Sopho yr course load: 2 honors 2 post-APs (also honors) 2 regulars (humanities are regular)
PSAT 99th percentile & full pts on math (doesn’t even worth a cent I know)
ECs:Computer Science (USACO, cyber security, and coding) & DECA (first year member) & Robotics (not doing much) & Science Fair (first year doing it) & my own club (not describing in too much detail so people in my school cant stalk on me but it has been featured by the school & we have some budget & ~70 members & its original, not key club or anything like that)
The rec for HSSC should be pretty decent (written by a teacher who taught a post-AP course and is advisor of my club)
The video for MIT Launch: Its pretty cool, but did not fully answer the prompt.
Race & ethnicity & gender: I’m at a disadvantage (not White or African American)
I didnt apply to any competitive research program (such as RSI) because I missed the deadline… cries
THANKS FOR READING SUCH A LONG POST AND PLZ CHANCE ME
MT launch is decent but really expensive for a summer program. Also, I guess it’ll be cool to work on a start up on your own throughout the summer instead of netflix. Stanford HSSC is expensive and is more college course than summer camp because it offers college credit courses. Very useful if you get a decent scholarship and if you need college credit for ex: if you want to take a gap year, but don’t want to be an year behind your co-years, you can take college credit courses in high school and transfer the credit and skip a few months of college or even the entire freshman year. Otherwise all it does is show that you didn’t waste your summer. I’m pretty sure you’ll get into hssc. MIT launch is more holistic so idk about that.
An alternative would be to spend the summer studying for APs etc. so you have little pressure in your junior year.
@cconfusedd thanks! Also, do you think going to MIT launch or HSSC (will take CS courses if I go there) would be more beneficial to college admission? I understand neither of them will be an actual bump in college apps but I’m trying to show that I challenge myself and has passion in CS
If you produce a successful or even semi-successful start-up via MIT launch that involves serious programming/long, windy algorithms, then there is hardly anything better that you could’ve spent your summer doing (I’m assuming CS is your intended college major) and will DEFINITELY help you to indicate your passion for CS. Plus, if the start-up is profitable, you might just end up paying for college yourself! (No one minds extra money). However, just attending MIT Launch and not ‘doing’ anything after it would not be beneficial at all and will be treated as a waste of four weeks.
As I said before, HSSC is really useful if you get a good scholarship and you get a good grade at the end of the program (at least a B). Otherwise, you’d have been better off spending the money on a vacation.