<p>72 out of 250 is a lot nicer sounding than RSI. but it’s still prestigious though, right?</p>
<p>Yeah, it is. The applicants to SSP are just self-selective since it’s not as widely-known and focuses on such a niche subject, whereas in RSI (correct me if I’m wrong) students focus on a topic of their choice.</p>
<p>And since nobody’s posted these here yet, here are the college admit rates of 2008 SSPers:
Ojai: [Summer</a> Science Program '08 / College Admissions](<a href=“Workspace not found”>Workspace not found)
Socorro: [SSP</a> '08, Socorro campus / Colleges](<a href=“Workspace not found”>Workspace not found)</p>
<p>In an amazing coincidence, I think they got int<a href=“ie.%20314”>100π</a> applicants last year.</p>
<p>Correlation does not imply causation. Many SSP’ers were accepted because they already had great achievements, EC’s, essays, w/e. And not that many get into Stanford, Yale, or Harvard through SSP, so it’s not like “guaranteed” acceptance at all, though college matriculation rates are pretty nice. Class of 2009 (last year) had 35 out of 64 students go to one of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech. Pretty impressive. We’ll see how my year does…</p>
<p>You should apply to SSP because you would think it’s fun to spend 6 weeks of your summer not sleeping, doing intense homework with others, looking at asteroids using telescopes, programming in VPython, etc. etc. Also, you get to meet a lot of cool/nerdy people and learn a lot from them, and grow as a person pretty much. </p>
<p>The acceptance rate is not that low (~25%) but very self-selective. You should try to distinguish yourself personally as well as academically if you apply, and show an interest in astronomy/physics since that’s the main topic of the program. </p>
<p>But besides SSP, you should look at other alternatives. I applied to RSI, YESS, BU Internship, and also got contact info for local professors to do research just in case I didn’t get into any (SSP was the only program that I got accepted to)</p>
<p>So don’t think of SSP as “guaranteed acceptance” to colleges, or the “perfect” experience, because it will not be either. The more you bring with you and share in the experience, the better experience you will have. </p>
<p>If anyone has any specific questions on essays or prompts or something, feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>
Yay AP Psych.</p>
<p>What if you haven’t learned physics or astronomy, but like science in general?</p>
<p>Lol I learned that in AP Stats actually =p
And that’s fine, I knew a couple people who had never taken physics before (practically no one had taken a course in astronomy), but you should be interested in physics/astronomy and show that you are interested in learning more about it. Most SSP’er had taken physics already.</p>
<p>I hadn’t taken physics, so the physics sets were basically me going “ZOMG save me genius people!” <em>bows down</em> But it all worked out in the end - I was a pretty good programmer, so I helped a lot of people with that. And physics started to make sense :)</p>
<p>As for astronomy, I had done a lot of personal reading about it over the years, so I knew all of the non-mathematical stuff they taught us about astro. Just be interested - if you’re not, you’ll be miserable. </p>
<p>Correlation vs causation - it’s everywhere! :P</p>
<p>If you guys have any more questions, ask, ask, ask!!! 
SSP was great. Lots of nerds who had great social skills. @_@</p>
<p>love SSP.
and love SSPers even more.
<3</p>
<p>When I applied to SSP, I was a terrible, terrible writer of personal essays. Looking back, my essays were very scattered and they had way less coherence than I would have liked. You guys need to show that you’re interested in math and science. You don’t have to be in Calc 3, you just have to be interested. If you wonder why crazy smart people don’t get in, it may be that they don’t appear to care about what they do.</p>
<p>Hey guys thought i’d chime in. I got accepted without having ever taken calculus, and the last physics class i took was in 8th grade. So don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know as much as you should. I don’t think i mentioned astronomy once in my essays… but it is definitely important to show that you are interested in science and learning! having good teacher references helps too. In the end i decided to decline the offer to work in a lab at an university and to do some music stuff. it was a tough choice but I think it turned out pretty well</p>
<p>velleity brings up and interesting point. However, SSP is still really hard. People who haven’t taken calculus will probably be at a disadvantage in admissions, but that can be made up with plenty of physics or compsci.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. I was a pretty crappy essay writer too, but I tried to emphasize my specific interests in math and science. It’s great practice for the college application season though.</p>
<p>Are they looking for a a lot of Physics classes on your transcript? Though I self-studied a lot of physics, but I haven’t taken any physic classes since 8th grade. My school has AP Physics B but I think it’s too easy so I didn’t take it. Do I need some solid proof of physics knowledge, will a SAT II Physics help?</p>
<p>Any one have suggestion?</p>
<p>At this point the alumni can just say: we don’t know. Lots of physics is great. Tons of people knew E/M, Physics C, took the SAT II. I just took a regular old physics honors course. It definitely helps, but not knowing physics won’t make you an auto-reject.</p>
<p>I was accepted as a sophomore without ever taking any physics courses, though I had been taking AP Calculus at the time. It was hard to get by at SSP, but doable.</p>
<p>I had no calculus, one semester of computer science a year and a half before SSP, and one year of pretty crappy honors physics. Hadn’t taken any SAT IIs, had never done research or legit competitions, hell, never had even taken ANY AP science yet. If I survived, anyone can. xD</p>
<p>Were you at Socorro?</p>
<p>@coin: G IS THE FORCE OF GRAVITY!!!</p>
<p>The first week took a bit of adjustment for a lot of us, to be fair…</p>