<p>Hi, I was browsing the MIT Admissions website and saw that they had the following (somewhat large) list of summer programs:</p>
<p>MITES
RSI
WTP
SSP
BU Research Internship Program
Clark Scholar Program
Garcia Summer Scholars
High School Summer Science Research Program (HSSSRP)
High School Honors Science/Mathematics/Engineering Program (HSHSP)
International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP)
Secondary Student Training Program (SSTP)
Student Science Training Program (SSTP)
AwesomeMath
Canada/USA Mathcamp
Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM)
Honors Summer Math Camp (HSMC)
Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS)
The Ross Program
Stanford University Mathematics Camp (SUMaC)</p>
<p>(and on another page: Olympiads in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics:
USA<em>O
Training camps for I</em>O
and the I_O)</p>
<p>Can anyone here give me the order of reputation/difficulty for the summer programs and Olympiads? Of course, those which you know about. You may also suggest other reputed programs.</p>
<p>P.S. Sorry for including the Olympiads, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put them.</p>
<p>There’s also [url=<a href=“http://launchsummer.org/]launch[/url”>http://launchsummer.org/]launch[/url</a>], an entrepreneurship summer program held at MIT</p>
<p>RSI is definitely top, followed closely by MITES and the Olympiad training camps. Some of those I haven’t heard of, but I’ve found that the prestige of the program can usually be indirectly proportional to its cost. Apply to any/all of those, but beware: most colleges have some sort of summer program that charges a lot of money but are neither competitive nor prestigious. Most of the time, the website can tell you how competitive it is(MITES and RSI accept ~3% of applicants, while SuMAC accepts around 25%. Programs such as Ross are extremely self selecting, however.) </p>
<p>There are also a LOT more programs than the ones listed here(SIMR, etc.) that are also very good.</p>
<p>All of the summer programs you listed here have great reputation. Make sure you know what you want to do during summer, whether it’s doing math/number theory, or doing research. You’ll have an awesome summer if you end up going to any of these programs. Also apply to back-ups and apply early. The ones you listed are all hard to get into, but some have rolling admissions, such as BU RISE, PROMYS, and Ross. For Ross, it’s significantly easier to get into if you apply in late January than in April/May before the deadline.
Another tip: when you write essays for these program applications, write them well. You can recycle them for college apps. :)</p>
<p>My D attended WTP. She ranked the pecking order of the MIT summer programs as RSI, WTP-Mech, WTP-EE, and MITES. Note that WTP has two tracks and the women in WTP view the mechanical engineering track as a bit more elite (elitist?) because it is smaller and perceived to be harder to get in to than the Electrical Engineering track. Whether that’s true or not, it’s still the perception of the WTP students.</p>
<p>Does anyone have info on what colleges MITES alumni attend? I’m a sophomore interested in applying to MITES next year.</p>