<p>@seal16
I wrote 598, and my teacher helped me do some deletes. Eventually it turned out to be 499…</p>
<p>@BeyondTheSky
Yeah so we do have lots of internationals. lol.
BTW, if u don’t mind, where are u from?</p>
<p>@SkylineBlue I’m from Canada. What about you?</p>
<p>@BeyondTheSky
I’m from China.
I’ve heard that some program didn’t consider Canadians as internationals because of some special visa policy (though Idk what it is.) Have u asked them which deadline should u follow? It seems like ur change will be larger if u are in the second flow.</p>
<p>@SkylineBlue
that must be a rumor. Doesn’t it say that it only students attending high school in the US count as domestic?</p>
<p>@SkylineBlue Thanks for the compliments!
I actually had the opportunity to live in Canada for 5 years in my childhood so which city do you live in @Beyondthesky?
I used to be in Toronto and then Drummondville, a tiny town near Montreal. </p>
<p>@SkylineBlue I’m not sure about the visa policy, but yes, apparently I’m considered international because I attend school outside of US.
@ProximaCentauri I live in Toronto. 
</p>
<p>Just sent my application out today. So what left is just prayer. [-O< </p>
<p>@argentum47 I’m a mess right now because my NHS app is due Wednesday, I have to mail this out by Wednesday, Literary Awards contest is due on February, got a ton of art work commissions (aka my job) to finish and prep the SATs for March… Ahhhh what is this Junior life? (And I’ve also got to organize the Prom, but I suppose I can just delay doing that for a bit…)</p>
<p>@ProximaCentauri I’m a domestic applicant but I moved form China four years ago. I’m pretty interested at the stats for internationals students, though. Ehhhh I think 5-10 people are internationals. They only specified the general acceptance for everyone in the email I got back with my decision.</p>
<p>Hmph. Sorry for that rant everyone, my stress level has just been insanely high recently, but I guess we all are around here… </p>
<p>Been a long time since I visited this site. A little story from an older ssp alumni to those of you who already applied and those still applying, I hope you’ll find this little story helpful as you wait for the admission results, receive them, and make conclusions based on them-</p>
<p>Talent can come from the most unexpected places. It may be correlated with high SAT scores and some other stats but it is not defined by any of those. I wasn’t top 10% grade-wise in my class, didn’t have straight A’s, and certainly didn’t have perfect (or near-perfect) SAT scores. No impressive math competitions like AMC/AIME/etc, no science Olympiads. My essays? with the kind of grammatical/sentence errors I couldn’t believe myself when I looked again fall of senior year. But for some reason I was admitted and after 6 weeks at ssp I was convinced I could do anything, even though I had ssp project results more inaccurate than you could imagine (3-digit percent errors if you could believe that). So convinced that after getting waitlisted and then rejected by every big name college except my safety, which as far as I checked is the lowest ranked school among the schools attended by SSPers throughout ssp history, I became convinced that at my safety I’ll learn more in 2 years than I’d have in 4 at the big-name colleges (an idea so ridiculous at the time it elicited a laugh from everyone who was present at that meeting). So convinced that faculty gradually got infected with my conviction and agreed to teach me 1-on-1, which led to the kind of studies that allowed me to finish undergrad+masters in 2 years and then admitted to the #1 phd program in my field (this time without applying anywhere else), and since then I’ve mentored others (including SSP grads) some of which went to big name schools and others who chose the no-name-schools to also do undergrad+masters in 2 years before going to the big name grad schools. </p>
<p>If I had different stats and went to big name college I’d certainly not acquire knowledge so quickly and get where I am now so fast, if at all. So don’t stress over SSP admissions regardless of how you look on paper, and when those admission results arrive, remember that your success and progress is determined by you and not by any program/college/institution. Good luck to you all, hope this was useful!</p>
<p>@Nobody426 I agree! Junior year is hell. Right now I’m tackling this NCTE 10 page essay thingy, along with a NASA space settlement design submission in a few days that I haven’t started… I’m taking the SATs as well, I can’t forget about that. And I’m starting to rethink my decision to apply to SSP.</p>
<p>@yisraeli could you name some other summer programs you applied to besides SSP while you were in high school? </p>
<p>@Holocaust
I think yisraeli’s point is “your success and progress is determined by you and not by any program/college/institution.”</p>
<p>@Nobody426 You hang in there as well! It’s less stressful for me now, but I was really stressed out about two weeks ago. Anyway, what helped me get through it is that you know the things you’re stressing about will be over soon.
Also, what does NHS stand for? All I can think of is National Health Service.</p>
<p>Oooh haha @argentum47, it stands for National Honor Society! It’s not that big of a deal in my school, but it’s opening me up to potential scholarships I can obtain next year as a senior. I have about four applications finishing up this week so I’m just about dying over here. It’ll all be worth it in the end, though.</p>
<p>@Holocaust You hang in there, too! We’ll all go through this together!</p>
<p>@Nobody426 oopsie, is NHS really big in the USA? This is how you can tell I’m international and a newbie to the forum.</p>
<p>@argentum47 NHS is not particularly big, just really common. A few hundreds of kids get in NHS at my school (which is a suburban 5A public school) so is not even that big a deal. </p>
<p>Just wondering…but is SSP only geared toward astronomical science? </p>
<p>Someone please answer this question. 
I am more interested in biochem than astro-physics. Should I still apply? </p>
<p>Have the same question. On a first 150 words short answers can we write about any science or just astro-physics? </p>
<p>@fairyfantasy and @seal16 SSP is worth applying for because based on what I’ve heard about it, it
sounds like a great summer program. Even if you may not be directly interested in astronomy and want to apply to the program, just be honest on all your short answers. If you like biochemistry, say that. And I’m not really an expert, but I would suggest relating your interest to astronomy in some way. If you like biology, you can relate your interests to something like astrobiology.</p>
<p>@BeyondTheSky …I feel like just giving up because I haven’t given my teachers the recommendation forms, yet. :o </p>