RSI 2018

One final nitpick, should I mention that my high school does not offer science AP courses until junior year on the optional comments, or will it seem whiny/ excessive? Thanks in advance.

Also, should I send a 750 SAT 2 in Chemistry? I also have an 800 in Biology M, which I am sending.

Why not? Is it better them not knowing you took it at all or tried and scored decently well?

Is it necessary to upload all score reports for standardized tests? If so, how? Isn’t there only one score upload button?

You have to merge all your PDF files into one file to submit.

Are the recommendations actual letters of recommendation?

Done with EVERYTHING except my personal statements :’) Time to write 4/5 essays LOL

Submitted my app finally!

Best of luck to all!

uhh yea, wat else would they be ?

When they say the limit is 5000 characters for the personal statements, did everyone fill up the full 5000 characters?

@Kanger0o theres no need to be rude… they were just asking a question

Good luck to all!

I didn’t fill my response, but most (if not all) were within 800 characters of the max. It is necessary to fill the 5000 characters, so one shouldn’t feel the need to fill it if they can’t think of anything to add

When technical scientific terms arise for our essays, should we include brief explanations?

@Fibbonachi10 I think I read something that said pretend you’re a bio major describing your research to a math major (replace bio with whatever you’re writing about).

Weird question: can we use contractions (like can’t instead of cannot)? I know you’re not supposed to in formal essays but I am way over character count

I would just try to clip a sentence or two off the formal essays. I don’t think it would look professional using the contractions. Be a little more brief?

@ham4greys Thanks a lot, that was very helpful.

Just submitted my RSI application guys! I don’t have many big awards or anything so it’s mostly a crapshoot for me… Anyone know the percentages of applicants who get in? Hopefully I do though…

@gurt567 RSI takes a wide range of people, even some that have little or no awards. Among domestic applications, they choose 50 out of over 1400 applications (a statistic I heard), which would be less than 3.6%. But, you also have to consider that they are selecting a certain amount per state (0-2 for most states and atleast 2 for competitive states). Nonetheless, best of luck!