I had meticulously planned my summer: AMC studying, SAT studying, an incredibly competitive medical research internship, and just a lot of soccer; my dad had other ideas. He made me sign up for Stanford’s money-grabbing summer college, bent with Stanford’s planned “name” factor that it would look better on college application. I showed him everything on the Internet about it being not that prestigious, not as much so as a research internship with a 7% acceptance rate with such high level research that it almost guarantees a spot at ISEF. He ignores that; I could get college credits from Stanford, so why waste my time at a highly acclaimed cancer research institute! He made a point to say that whatever he says will go, which is fine, if there were any logic behind it. Ugh, sorry that I’m ranting a bit too much, I’m angry. I spent hours on summer apps that was nullified in a second. Please tell me how to fix.
Also, for any freshmen reading this, if you think your parent(s) could do something like this to you, forego PSAT studying sophomore year and avoid that elegantly hypnotizing “invitation” from summer colleges that your parents will drool over.
Your dad probably should have quashed any ideas you had beforehand if he seems so resistant to them now, so what’s the case? Did he encourage you to apply to this “prestigious” internship or did you do it without his/their knowledge? Also you’re kind of young to be stressing yourself about things of this nature, if you got accepted into for this summer then you’ll probably be accepted again.
Do you have any idea at all about how it looks to complain about these opportunities in this manner?
It’s almost a disaster to leave the research internship over a paid program, imo.
You could tell your dad that it’s good to go to Stanford classes, since Stanford classes are rigorous, there is a chance that you may not do well in them which would pretty much kill your college application as you have already proven that you can’t handle it. So better not take that risk. If you didn’t take those classes, Stanford won’t know if you can handle them or not.
Wow I wish my Dad would even consider paying for the Standford summer classes! How about you be thankful for that instead of complaining? I don’t think you understand how few kids can just spend thousands of dollars to go study at Standford.
At first I thought “who is it that your dad is screwing and what does summer have to do with it” when I clicked this thread… :">
Seriously though, that is hard. Maybe call Stanford and speak to someone in admissions, see if they could tell you (or even better, your father) which one is better to do, application-wise.
@mco1997 he isn’t exactly splurging on the classes; they are actually very close to free with the aid I’m getting.
@albert69 it’s alright lol; I decided to attend both as the schedules are actually not too conflicting
@JustOneDad I’m not complaining about the opportunity – it’s a fantastic one. I just really wanted to do one and had spent hours applying and getting into it that my dad is just now bringing up Stanford
May I suggest talking to him more instead of ranting on this forum?
I agree, the selective internship is WAY better than a paid program. However, if you got a scholarship to attend the Stanford program, THAT is worthy of mention. Still not the same as the internship program though (which I assume if one of the nationally competitive ones).
Can you do both?
Can you tell us the name of the internship?
@MYOS1634 I think the OP is getting financial aid, not scholarship. I could be wrong.
@mco1997 If you had a choice between spending a dollar or even just wasting the time at a comparatively useless event or spending very little to get useful experience, which would you choose? The OP isn’t being unappreciative of his/her opportunities. I imagine s/he spent a lot of time debating with his/her dad about the benefits of each, and this forum is a way to let out his/her frustrations.