I’m a Asian Junior who goes to a competitive public school in California. I want to major in Mechanical/aerospace engineering.
4.00 UW ; 4.18 W GPA Note: My school does not offer AP courses to freshmen and sophomores.
Stem Courses currently taking: Calculus BC (at my local university), AP Physics, AP Chemistry, AP Computer Science
PSAT: 1430 (680 Reading, 750 Math) - recommended for RSI is 700 Reading, 740 Math
Chinese SAT: 750 - self-taught Chinese in 6 months (was born in US)
Extracurriculars:
Started a non-profit toy business (after creating a new toy product) that uses the leftover money for charity
FIRST Robotics Competition World Championships Qualifier Team
Captain of NASA Space Settlement Competition Team
Captain of Toshiba Exploravision Team
Captain of “Campfire” story-based app development team
Dave Wittry Memorial Programming Contest (selected)
Staff writer in school newspaper (competitively selected)
Astronomy Club (Secretary,Treasurer)
Board Game Club (Secretary) - led integration of special-ed kids into the club during lunch
Model United Nations (4 years)
California Scholarship Federation (similar to National Honors Society)
Computer Science Club
Awards: Youth of the Month (represented my entire school), Pride of the Pack, Principal’s Honor Roll, 20+ Outstanding/Commendation MUN Awards
Community Service: ~ 100 hours so far
Research intern (working with professor) at local university
Don’t you have to apply through your school though? At least for the school I attended, students were not allowed to apply individually. People had to submit applications to the school and the school could send whoever they chose.
The RSI application asks about research experience. Do you have any? If not,still give it a go, but also try for this research program in math
at Hampshire College, its easier to get into compared to RSI and may be really helpful to learn more mathematics for
your aerospace engineering interests. Hampshire Math is still a program where you must test in, so its not easy to get in either, but you may have a better chance at Hampshire Math, compared to RSI if you have yet to do any research work.
There are lots of west coast summer academic programs for you to pick from at UCLA, Caltech, etc.
Don’t dwell too much on RSI, but apply and see what happens. The essays are tough though, if you have not
done any actual scientific research work. Normal for your age group to not have done that yet. Good luck.
I think you can apply directly to RSI here, without your school nominating you.
It costs $65 to apply and the deadline is January 12, 2018. Students that already have performed research in a scientific field, often can answer the research oriented questions better than a student who had never been exposed to scientific research. The RSI application is at least as hard as many high end college applications. Good luck.
Good luck, but apply to other programs. Be aware that RSI does not accept students from California in proportion to the population of the state. (So, many fewer than 1/8 of RSI attendees are from California.)