<p>^ rejected is one word isn't it? ha ha.</p>
<p>Good fun? is 2
but i don't know if he meant that.</p>
<p>good lord!</p>
<p>New SSPers!</p>
<p><3</p>
<p>If you guys have any questions, feel free to ask. I went to Socorro in 2008. Just last year!</p>
<p>Also, if you're wondering how much SSP will help (eek! I should have put this up before the application deadline!) this site might do it. It's a gathering of the colleges that the Socorro kids have been accepted to.
<a href="http://ssp2008socorro.pbwiki.com/Colleges%5B/url%5D">http://ssp2008socorro.pbwiki.com/Colleges</a></p>
<p>Seriously, guys. I'm on spring break, I've been accepted to amazing colleges, I have lots of time to answer questions. So ask them! Go! Barrage me with questions!</p>
<p>lol id be more apt to ask questions if i knew if i got in already -.-. waiting for a decision is a painful process.</p>
<p>oh well, ill ask one, cuz its something i was considering.</p>
<p>im not sure how the timeframe for applying to college works, so does going to ssp affect the time one has to write college app essays and also get schoolwork done (thats assigned in the summer)?</p>
<p>I leave to visit colleges in California for three days and this place explodes. =P</p>
<p>@secshisuhee (I had to copy & paste that username): Excellent. I have many questions, so I hope you don't mind.</p>
<p>Wow. Did everyone who applied to Caltech/MIT get in?</p>
<p>Also, are you a girl? I just want to know how bad the boy-girl ratio is, and if it's easy for girls to get along well with everyone, especially if they're used to having mostly friends of the same sex.</p>
<p>Do you go out often with SSP? Like into town, or on little field trips, or hiking or something? (Especially hiking. I mean, it's New Mexico.)</p>
<p>Should I prepare for the curriculum? I have a feeling I'm going to be the confused/behind/lost one on campus.</p>
<p>I'm going to Socorro this summer, so basic questions: weather/campus/food? Haha, you can be really general and brief there, since I know that's a general question.</p>
<p>@tricky - You'll have lots of free time to write college essays, but to tell you the truth, you don't WANT to write the essays while you're there. I'm pretty sure that most of us wrote our essays after SSP. We had about four to five weeks until school started. I actually wrote all of mine in September and October during the school months because I procrastinate. SSP really doesn't affect the "college process". In fact, I recommend you not write your essays until after SSP. Most of us wrote our essays on our experiences at SSP and it looks like it's worked for us so far...</p>
<p>@coin - Yes, I am a girl. There really wasn't any problem with people getting along with the opposite sex. Boys are people too, y'know! Hahahaha, no seriously, the guys were easy to talk to, nice, blah blah blah. You'll have no problem getting along with them. Maybe even hooking up with them (we had seven relationships last year! That's fourteen kids out of 35!) The boy-girl ratio is, if i recall correctly, something like 2:1.</p>
<p>Ohyes, we go out <em>often</em>. We went into town several times for various "field trips" (like watching the Dark Knight!), we went to wal-mart every couple days, observatories, White Sands Nat'l Park, we <em>almost</em> went to Sandia Labs but we had some problems with national security, the lake, a mountain (this is the only place I can remember that we did some actual hiking), and a lot of other stuff I'm forgetting.</p>
<p>I'm assuming that you've already taken (or will have taken) calc BC, mechanics, and perhaps multivariable. What will really help is if you have a background in computer science. We use vpython and it's a rather straightforward language, but I had a bit of trouble since it was my first time programming. And you aren't going to be the only one that's behind. That's what your fellow students and TAs are for! Everyone will experience a part (or many parts) in the curriculum that they can't grasp. But remember, it's not for a grade, it's all for the sake of learning as much as you can in the shortest period of time possible. And it's fun. Trust me.</p>
<p>The weather was generally great. We had really awesome 70 degree weather for the first two weeks, then monsoon season, which was okay, because i like the rain. Monsoon season does kill off your time to observe though. Don't worry, you technically only need three observations to complete your orbit determination. It's best to have four though, just in case you messed up one of the others. The campus is pretty cool too. Our dorms were okay, basic college dorms, but we didn't spend much time in them anyways. On campus, there were basically five places we frequented - our dorms, the lecture hall, the computer lab, the cafeteria, and the gym. The computer lab has one annoying feature though. There are screens over all of the computers which can make it hard to see, and we're not allowed to take them off. Everybody took them off anyways. The food was okay. It's not your mother's homecookin', but it's good food. It does get slightly monotonous after a few weeks, but the cafeteria staff tries to avoid that.</p>
<p>If you want to see an example of an orbit determination write-up, my teammate, Konrad, put his up online - <a href="http://files.kundziad.net/temp/1998_YP11_OD-report_komorowski_k.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://files.kundziad.net/temp/1998_YP11_OD-report_komorowski_k.pdf</a></p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that on the College List for us 08ers isn't even half-done yet. We still have April 1st to deal with =D</p>
<p>I'm soooooooooooo jealous now! Just hope I get selected in ISSYP :( I'm sending my app in half an hour. I'm not applying to anything else.</p>
<p>I just mailed in my app...what exactly do they mean BY the 20th? Because my app will arrive at appx. 10:00 a.m tomorrow morning....
shiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>@porkbun - I mailed my application on the very last day possible. Don't worry, Mr. Bowden is very open about application dates. He'll get it through.</p>
<p>I meant "word count," heh.</p>
<p>Secshisuhee, I'm applying with rather crappy classes (4.0, but my highest math is precalc and my most advanced science is AP chem and regular physics. I actually know Sam, who also went to Socorro in '08 as well, and he said about half the people had no calculus yet either, but that you learn everything you need in about a week. Do you think that's accurate? Also, how hard is it if you're in the bottom 25% or so of the people there both academic and class wise?</p>
<p>@barem - Sam lied. It wasn't half the people. It was more like four or five kids who hadn't had calculus. You do learn everything you need to know, but I'm sure it's much more helpful to have gone over some of the main calculus concepts (derivatives, integrals) before you go.
You should be fine as long as you pay attention to the lectures. Remember, you're not going to graded over this stuff, so you won't really know if you're in the "bottom 25%". However, it would be a good idea to try!</p>
<p>dang -.- after reading seschusihee(sp?)'s posts, i want to go so badly now zomg -__-.</p>
<p>i bet if i dont get in ill be depressed for weeks. -.- lol.</p>
<p>hmm, heres another one, are there weird bugs or animals wed have to look out for at socorro?</p>
<p>Wow - you guys really need to relax :)</p>
<p>I also applied to CMU AP/EA. But they don't mail admissions decisions until early May - long after I have to say yes to SSP. </p>
<p>Free program would have been nice, but SSP wins anyway ;)</p>
<p>secshisuhee - thanks for your experiences, sounds awesome!!
My friend Ryan went to socorro 08 too, seems like everyone had amazing things to say about ssp.</p>
<p>secshisuhee - How hard is the physics to learn? I haven't had physics since eighth grade, and it was pretty basic stuff. I'll have finished Calc AB, mathwise. But I do have programming experience (C++), so hopefully I'll be a little bit ahead there :)</p>
<p>@tricky - there are weird bugs! THOSE BUGS ARE HUGE! I swear I saw a cockroach the size of my arm. (Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I swear it's just a little)</p>
<p>@bks85 - RYANNNNNN~~ tell that kid i miss him to death. er. well. you don't know my name. hahaha nevermind, i'll tell him myself.</p>
<p>@book_worm - you're probably going to have trouble... i dont think anybody was there with a physics background like that...</p>
<p>gah still no answer..
I want my response now haha
I'll bombard you with questions once I find out if I'm accepted or not..</p>
<p>I only applied to 1 campus cause I couldn't make it to the other one..so I hope that doesn't affect their decision..I hope not..</p>
<p>secshisuhee - Any suggestions for concepts I should look up?</p>
<p>I am looking forward to six weeks of being bombarded by information, though. Fun :D</p>
<p>Physic-wise, I'm in the same boat. The last thing I remember was drawing electrical currents on a floor plan in 8th grade. ah, I chose chem AP over physics 0_0
Math...let's not go there.<br>
But at least I'll have comp sci.</p>
<p>@tomjones - Well, you're chances of admissions are going to go down, but I'm not sure by how much.</p>
<p>@book_worm - I don't recall much of what we did... Basically, mechanics gives you the foundation to work on the problems that we did there, so if you wanted to go over the kinematic equations, how to use them, etc, etc. You might also want to learn Kepler's laws of planetary motion, but I don't actually recall using that.</p>