<p>My son got a postcard inviting him to apply for the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP). According to their web site, they may have got students' information from PSAT, or from teachers who nominated students etc. </p>
<p>Has anyone heard about this program? Has any of your children participated in this program? What is your overall experience? It is six week program, is it worth the time? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>TASP is legit. There are various threads about it on CC. My D did it two years ago and her experience was fabulous. It is more than worth the time. Note, however, it is extremely competitive, as competitive as Ivy college admissions if not more so. If your son is interested, he should definitely go for it.</p>
<p>midwestDad2, if you look at CC’s [Summer</a> Programs - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/summer-programs/]Summer”>Summer Programs - College Confidential Forums) forum, you’ll see a TASP thread in full swing. It sounds amazing. I couldn’t talk D1 into applying. The application is a great deal of work (but can provide a jump on college application essays), and the program is highly selective.</p>
<p>Oh, and it’s free. :)</p>
<p>My D applied and attended last year at Cornell. It was an amazing experience and her TASP friends seem to have become friends for life. Difficult to get into (around 7 - 8% acceptance rate). Last night D came running into my room to tell me that 7 of her TASP friends (out of around 30) were accepted by Yale, 1 into Stanford and D also accepted into the Ivy of her choice.
The program itself is intense: hard work, a "monastic’ experience, with a lot of social bonding. In our house we give it a 10+.</p>
<p>From all I’ve heard, this is a really excellent program–an intense experience for students with strong intellectual inclinations. The topics vary from year to year. (There are about 6 or 8 each year? I’ve forgotten.) I’d say that if one of the announced topics snags your son’s interests, it is well worth applying. They seem to send the announcements to very high scorers on the PSAT (230+?).</p>
<p>It is both an absolutely first-rate program in terms of what kids get out of it AND an absolutely gold-standard credential in terms of communicating to others that a kid has been judged a superstar in his or her cohort on a national level.</p>
<p>Joining the choir, TASP is widely recognized as one, if not the, top humanities summer program in the country. It is highly competitive and applying includes submitting several thoughtful essays and a intense interview (if you make it that far).</p>
<p>D1 made it to the interview stage and after that experience, college admissions interviews were a piece of cake. As an indication of how selective TASP is, D1 was accepted into all of the colleges she applied to, but not to TASP :(.</p>