<p>The summer before senior year is a time to do something that will stand out among other applicants! I plan on applying to Brown next year, most likely ED.
I am choosing between these summer programs
- getting a psychology internship through discovery internships ( may be located in London or Boston )
- Harvard Summer School
- Summer@Brown, I will take all psychology classes
- Brown’s Leadership Institute AND Brown’s Ireland Study Abroad
- Attending Oxford University’s summer program</p>
<ul>
<li>Money is not an issue</li>
</ul>
<p>Which one would most stand out to brown??!!??</p>
<p>Get a job. Or volunteer 40 hours a week in your community.</p>
<p>I’m deadly serious. None of those 5 options will “stand out among other applicants.”</p>
<p>I already have a full time internship during the school year and I volunteer 5+ hours each weekend during the school year as well. I feel like getting a job or doing more community service would just be normal for what my application will already have, you know what i mean?
Thanks for your advice tho!
Also, some girl at my school last year got accepted to Brown and she did the Harvard Summer School program. I am leaning towards it because of that but at the same time I feel as if colleges will look at that and laugh at me for some reason…</p>
<p>I agree with fireandrain, the psych internship (especially if by some chance you’re actually getting to interact with patients) will be the best thing. 2nd best would be oxford since at least you’ll get to be in london which will be cool.</p>
<p>Summer programs at colleges don’t help people get into school other than they’re better than spending your summer doing nothing. If there’s a psych course at either that you really want to take, they’re not bad things to do, but none of these options is going to really make you stand out.</p>
<p>Get a job doing maintenance on a golf course. Be a summer camp counselor. Paint houses. Mow lawns. </p>
<p>Just googled Discovery Internships. Since you are paying for the privilege of doing an internship, all that summer experience says to Brown and other schools is that your parents have money and are willing to spend it. That London program costs $7800. That is just beyond absurd. Donate that money to a deserving charity and do something positive to help your community. Build a playground for poor kids. Work with the homeless.</p>
<p>The kid from my daughter’s school who did Harvard Summer School (who had great grades and SATs), only got into one of the 10 selective schools he applied to. Harvard sure didn’t help him stand out. </p>
<p>Let me put it a little differently. If you want to do something this summer that makes you stand out for college admissions, then get a job or volunteer. If you want a really cool summer experience in England or want to study something you are really interested in for the sake of learning something, then do one of those programs. IOW, only do those programs if psychology is so fascinating and important to you that you want to spend the summer studying it. Of course, you could also get a job and read Freud and Jung during your free time.</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice! I am considering finding a unique job where I live now, which is new orleans. That won’t be hard to do in this city… And I am hoping that Tulane University has psychology summer classes that I can take ( the classes are cheap! plus I can get some college credit!).</p>
<p>btw i live right next to Tulane so its not like one of those Harvard SSP programs. I would live at home and take the classes.</p>
<p>Fireandrain - I’ve been reviewing some of the other posts on this site concerning Discovery Internships and how it is “evaluated” by college admissions officials. You’ve taken the position, same as many other posters on this forum, that “since you are paying for…an internship…all that experience says…to schools is that your parents have money.” This is certainly a valid assumption, but there is a common misconception about the way participants in Discovery Internships could or should represent their internship experience on a college application. Here’s the reality: </p>
<p>You don’t need to specify on your college applications how you acquired your internship experience. Would a student that lined up an internship through his or her parents specify on their college application that they got the internship through mom or dad? I don’t think so. We don’t tell our participants to put Discovery Internships on their college application - we tell them to put their specific internship. After all, they’re the one who successfully completed the internship; we just helped them get it. I suppose, for most high school students, the tendency is to focus on “getting in,” whether to a college, an internship, a club, or whatever. But in the real world, no one really cares about whether you got into a particular school or job - they only care about what you did there. If you do an internship in high school and spend a few weeks or months filing papers and doing meaningless administrative work, no college admissions office is going to be particularly impressed. We help student’s acquire meaningful professional experience that informs their decision-making about where and why they want to go to a particular school, and that’s what helps them “stand out in the college application process.” </p>
<p>I’ve copied some of the response above from another post I made on CC here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/summer-programs/1089299-discovery-internships-anyone-have-experience-them.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/summer-programs/1089299-discovery-internships-anyone-have-experience-them.html</a></p>
<p>I certainly don’t want to diminish the value of your suggested alternatives (getting a job or volunteering). These are both great free or paid ways to spend the summer. As an organization that is built on the fundamental belief that there is a very real educational value to work experience as a high school student, we strongly endorse the pursuit of any work experience, whether in a “conventional summer job” or an internship. But I think most people can appreciate that the experience of interning in a professional field is going to be more enriching than a typical summer job. If this wasn’t the case, we probably wouldn’t have dozens of partnerships with educational non-profits and thousands of individual educators that believe in our program and the value of career-focused experiential learning. Is it necessary to do an “internship program” such as ours to acquire that experience? That’s a much more debatable point and not one that I’m going to address, because obviously we have a biased perspective. However, to tie together two of your recommendations (“If you want to…stand out for college admissions, then get a job. If you want a really cool summer experience in England…then do one of those programs.”), I can’t help but point out that our London Program checks off both of those boxes. It’s too bad that you don’t see the value in the experience, but many people do. Of course, if as you suggest, the original poster would be better of simply donating that tuition money to a good cause, well, we’re not going to dispute the value in that. You might be interested in learning more about our philanthropy at [Scholarships</a> : Discovery Internships](<a href=“http://www.discoveryinternships.com/scholarships]Scholarships”>http://www.discoveryinternships.com/scholarships)</p>
<ul>
<li>Discovery Internships</li>
</ul>
<p>DiscoveryInterns:</p>
<p>In high school, I was able to find awesome research internships in my area of choice (biology/medicine) without paying for the opportunity. Which is a good thing, because my parents sure couldn’t afford to pay nearly $8000 for my summer plans! In fact, I was paid for one of my internships, and that money I made pays some of my college expenses.</p>
<p>My issue with your program is that it teaches students that you can get any job if you throw enough money at it, which is not true in the real world. You need to work hard to stand out to a possible employer.</p>
<p>Nothing you say, DiscoveryInterns, would lead me to endorse your program or encourage a student to use it. I think what you do is despicable. You are actually taking good internships away from low-income, deserving students who don’t have money. I hope and pray that most companies stay far away from your programs, and select interns based on their experience and education and personal qualities, and not on their parents ability to pay. </p>
<p>And I think that this is an area where the alumni interview can be helpful. As an alumni interviewer, I ask about summer experiences, and if a student has a particularly interesting internship, I ask how they got it. I would hate to think that the student would lie to me about paying you to get the internship.</p>
<p>You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of high school students in this country over the last 50 years who could get a summer internship in London without the help an organization like yours. The vast majority of high school students can’t afford to go to London for an unpaid internship. So I bet that most admissions offices would look at that experience and think this kid has parents willing to pay big bucks.</p>
<p>Let me start by saying the Summer Discovery/Summer Internships/Musiker “Family” is made up of a bunch of money hungry greedy people. I personally enrolled and experienced one of their internships and even though I had fun and somewhat gained knowledge, I cannot tell you how much I loathed the program itself. The internship they promised me was NOT AT ALL what it was in reality. They abused their employees/interns and the Discovery Internships team simply looked the other way. I tried changing my internship the first week of the program and they could not be any more impassionate and selfish. This meant I had to endure the horrible internship I was so looking forward to for 4 weeks. I thought after the ridiculous amount of money I had paid, they’d have to care. On another note, I really felt ripped off from all the promised “meals” that ended up being cold Papa John’s after I got home from my internship and nothing in between. I thought maybe being in another country and such a diverse metropolitan city, we’d be able to experience different foods and activities. Well, I was wrong. All the restaurants we went to were American (Hard Rock Cafe, Pizza Hut, Subway, etc.) and the activities ranged from Bowling, going to the movies, going out for ice cream, etc. And the worst part was that it was all MANDATORY. Basically, if you want an authentic, enriching experience with a program who even slightly cares about your affairs, DO NOT ENGAGE WITH DISCOVERY INTERNSHIPS/SUMMER DISCOVERY.</p>