Hello everyone,
I have actually just created this account in order to hear opinions on my current situation. Through a relatively prestigious scholarship foundation combined with the Dean’s Scholarship, I have a plane ticket to Providence and tuition for Summer@Brown paid. For the most part, this scholarship is merit based. I have searched far and wide on these forums to find someone similar to myself, so I would not need to create this forum. Basically, all I have read leads me to believe pre-college programs have little to no effect on college admissions. This opportunity is rare for someone from a farming community, and I am wondering how I could turn this experience into resume builder! I have selected a lab course that is taught by a professor at Brown. I am hoping that a relationship can built there. I am open to any advice on how to make the best of this experience for both my summer and my college admissions future! I can provide additional details if that is helpful.
I would say it all depends on how you make it come off. If you state that you genuinely gained something from the program instead of just using it to say, “Look at me, I did this program to get into college,” then you should be good. While pre-college programs often don’t carry a lot of weight, the experiences gained from them can definitely help you. Just make sure to provide a unique perspective - there’s plenty of cliche essays about how programs like these have impacted individuals, so make sure yours stands out!
As bwulv points out - the experience is meaningful if there is something it can add to you and your application outside of “I went to Summer@Brown 2015 on a merit based scholarship.”
For example, right of the bat I’m assuming “farming community” means you’re from a small town? Is your town diverse at all? I’m guessing it’s not that diverse (maybe I’m totally wrong?). Summer@Brown will probably be the most diverse environment you’ve been in to date. When I did it in 2004, one of the people in my friend group was a kid from Germany. Growing up in NYC, an international person wasn’t exactly mind blowing but it was still an interesting and informative experience to spend so much time with someone my age who grew up and was living in Europe. Lots of discussion was had about life as a teenager in NYC vs. SF vs. Chicago vs. Germany (I forget what city he was from). He obviously knew english well but still had a lot to learn from us in terms of slang and idioms and sounding like an american teenager. He taught us some german words and phrases etc. Simply put - it was a cool experience. Now in my case, it didn’t make it anywhere into my application because it wasn’t some defining experience for me but who knows what kinds of experiences you may have - you may have something that really changes your outlook in some way or really gives you guidance on what you want to do going forward.
With regard to the lab course - if you link us a description I can get a better sense of what exactly you’re doing but I doubt you’ll get much more than exposure to some techniques that will help in college lab courses or if you’re really lucky, landing a volunteer research position as a high schooler at your local university or as a freshman/sophomore college student. So what that would entail is not just mindlessly going through the assignments but really understanding how and why each technique is used. That’s probably more important than the actual protocol since often those vary from lab to lab and it’s pretty easy to learn a protocol. What’s much harder to teach is the mindset of understanding what each technique is capable of showing, what it’s limitations are, and thus being able to decide what technique to use to answer a given question. If scientific research is what you’re really into, maybe see if the prof can spend some time showing you around his lab or talking to you about his own research. If you have student TAs who do research (either undergrad or grads) talk to them about how they got where they are - what sorts of things they work on - what advice would they have etc.
You can make the most out of this opportunity by not only doing very well in the class, but also by developing a relationship with the professor to the point where you can ask for a letter of recommendation from him/her. A recommendation from a Professor at Brown would surely help your application a lot
A meaningful recommendation from a professor at Brown would help (I don’t think it would help a lot). I doubt you would be able to get a meaningful rec from this class.
I went last year and I’m returning this year. I had a grad student teaching my class last year (Macroecon), not a professor… pretty much across the board, though, you don’t develop a very close relationship with your teacher in the summer@brown courses. If I ran into my teacher, she wouldn’t remember my name. If you really put yourself out there and excel- like ask a lot of questions, talk to the professor after class, ask for advice about the college admissions game- you can probably make a solid enough impression to get a good rec. You’ll have to really push for it, though.
Also if you have any other questions just ask! I had a million questions going in last year.