<p>Hi! I'm facing a major dilemma. I received an internship at NIH for the summer but then I also received a full scholarship to travel to and live in Japan for 6 weeks. I tried to make arrangements to do them both but my program coordinator for NIH told me I had to choose. Please help! </p>
<p>Factors I'm trying to consider:
Which one I want more
Which one would look better on a college application</p>
<p>Please note that the NIH internship lasts from the summer through the whole school year taking up half my schedule for the year. This means I have to take less classes/ go on a half day schedule with limited time for extracurriculars. Also, it's not a paying internship. However, I would be working with cancer cells and using gene therapy to try to cure it. For the trip to Japan, airfare and everything is paid for. The only things I would have to pay for are personal expenses. I would be doing a homestay with another family and attending school and living in Japan like a normal person. This is sort of a once in a lifetime opportunity for me because ,although I am aware that I can always go on exchanges in college, this tip would cost me nothing and the scholarship is very hard to get.</p>
<p>I went abroad last summer to Barcelona, Spain and it is my best memory of my life. I went for 2 months, stayed with a family, went to language classes, and met a WHOLE group of international friends that I still keep in touch with. The trip cost me 5k and it was worth EVERY DOLLAR. I would FOR SURE do it again for free.</p>
<p>You should definately do the study abroad, especially since it’s free! Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to do the internship some other time. I just think that if you were to do the internship, you’d regret it knowing that you could be in Japan right at that moment. What if you end up hating your internship? You’ll always have the opportunity to get an internship somewhere, but you won’t always have the chance to go to Japan for a month and a half for FREE. Besides, living in Japan will improve your Japanese which will look really good at college applications (since you’re dedicated) and will definately help you in the long run when looking for a career.</p>
<p>I think just by your post it seems like you want to go to Japan more than taking the internship. Like you said, its the opportunity of a lifetime and you’ll have stories to tell everyone when you get back and when you end up having children. </p>
<p>STUDY ABROAD!</p>
<p>NIH internship is something you DO NOT turn down. Its really tough and it looks good on app. If i only i had the ability to be able to choose what i wanted to do this summer…but good job on your acceptance into the abroad program but NIH is by far the best.</p>
<p>The first thing you should ask yourself is whether or not you’ll enjoy either of these programs. Not whether it’ll loog good on a college app and not which one you’ll enjoy more or which one will look better, but whether or not you’ll enjoy them at all.</p>
<p>Now I’m going to respond based on the assumption that you will be quite happy at either opportunity. Because if there isn’t one you would be happy attending then you’d have already made your decision (or you should have). So given that postulate…</p>
<p>Keep one thing in mind: you are going to have plenty of fun. Regardless of where you go, you are going to enjoy it. This isn’t like deciding between the two safeties you got into because no other college accepted you and you’re trying to figure out which one will suck less, it’s a judgment of the greater of two goods. Not the lesser of two evils.
So…
The NIH internship is definitely a big deal. You got in pat yourself on the back and consider it hard. It’s not just any internship as the first reply seems to be blowing it off as. It’s nationally renowned and it will be recognized if placed on your college app. It’s also a great opportunity/experience and more than makes up for the lost time to spend towards classes and EC’s. However,
The summer abroad seems quite interesting as well. Are there any more details you could provide as to what scholarship you received, from whom, anything else relevant? From what I can gather it won’t be so well recognized (though I could be wrong) on a college app and it makes little difference to most colleges how much you paid to travel outside of some other context (how you came about that scholarship may be more of a big deal so I can’t say). Though the significance on a college application appears to be to you, and very well should be, second to the actual experience of the option which from the sounds of it you expect to be quite exciting. It is an opportunity that will be difficult to come across again any time soon (though you could always go traveling yourself at a later date). </p>
<p>You also do seem to be leaning more towards the travel abroad regardless. Though that may just been a preemptive defense you put up against the average CC’er like InvisibleMan and myself defending NIH. Though you may want to consider what you’ll be doing there. As you said you’d just be living there for a period as a normal student. Of course there are things you’d gain from it like the experience, opportunity to develop language and acquire cultural knowledge, etc. But essentially it sounds more like things you could be doing at a later period (minus the alluring factor of it being free). While NIH may not be something that could happen again unless you plan on going into that particular field. NIH does seem like it will translate better onto paper but the intrinsic value of the travel abroad may make up for that. Or perhaps the scholarship you earned is a much bigger deal that I’m simply unfamiliar with. Who knows?</p>
<p>While I hate to sound cliched, I can’t resist. You’re the one who will need to make the decision. No one for can make it for you.</p>
<p>I definitely think you should study abroad just because it would be a great, eye-opening experience and because you get to go for free! It’ll be hard to get to go abroad for free again if you let this opportunity pass by. I feel like you have your whole life ahead of you to get an NIH internship, and maybe you could get it next summer or just arrange independent research with a college professor at another time. But definitely, GO to Japan!</p>
<p>I’d guess that you are in Montgomery County, MD because of the NIH opportunity.</p>
<p>Almost everyone here knows someone at NIH. If you want an unpaid internship there, you can find another one. You can also find one that isn’t such a schedule killer as the whole summer plus half-days for the academic year. I’ve known students to have a one or two afternoon a week internship there!</p>
<p>If you really want to go to Japan, do that. But before you leave, ask around at NIH for suggestions about other options in other labs.</p>
<p>Figure out which one that you’d enjoy most Do that one.
Whichever one you choose is likely to change your life big time because of the new things you’ll be exposed to and the new things you’ll learn about yourself. That’s why you should pick what you most want to do. Either could look good to colleges depending on what you do with the experience and how you present the experience to college.</p>
<p>If you’re considering which would look better on your college applications, then take the NIH internship and thank God you got it! Tons of kids go overseas but to get that internship sets you apart. Good luck! That’s a great problem to have to solve! ;)</p>
<p>NIH is the way to go.</p>
<p>swissmiss3</p>
<p>Where this particular student lives, just about anyone can get some kind of internship at NIH. He/she really does have the option of going to Japan for the summer and then doing something else at NIH during the school year. Sometimes, geography is everything.</p>
<p>The bottom line is to do the one that you most would enjoy. Make the most of that opportunity, and highlight it on your app.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think that more people get NIH internships (this particularly is true of smart students in metropolitan D.C.) than get all expense paid 6-week immersion experiences in Japan. Spending 6 weeks as a high school student living with a Japanese family and being immersed in Japanese culture sounds like more of a once in a lifetime experience than doing an NIH internship. </p>
<p>I see far more students posting on cc about doing science internships than I see students who get full scholarships for 6-week summer programs abroad. Certainly, there are students whose parents pay for them to study abroad, but that’s very different than getting a full scholarship to study abroad.</p>