Orbitality

High school students often go to summer camps — they spend several weeks in the wilderness or in some foreign country enjoying themselves. More determined (read: masochistic) kids go to nerd camps; instead of tanning on the beach, they’ll tan under the fluorescent lights of college classrooms. Both former and latter programs cost a pretty penny (about a thousand dollars a week), though, and the determined and thrifty student hunts for an elusive kind of summer camp: one that’s free.

There are a handful of camps that offer free admission, gathering money from a sponsoring university or from corporate and private donors. One of the most prestigous of such camps is RSI (Research Science Institute) that is hosted at (not by) MIT. Approximetaly 2000 rising juniors apply every year, and only 75 are accepted. You are twice as more likely to get into Princeton, Harvard, or MIT than RSI. The students that are accepted spend six weeks working with university faculty on research projects, completely free of charge. I was rejected from RSI.

Drexel's Mascot

Another much less known (and consequently less prestigious) program is hosted at Drexel University called Drexel Summer Mentorship. Drexel is a “more selective” private school in Philadelphia that has a large engineering department. Carnegie Mellon, RPI, and MIT are much more popular engineering schools with a large and talented applicant pool. Ask any aspiring engineer about Drexel and they will either scoff or raise an eyebrow; this is something that the school desperately wants to change. One of the PR tricks the university runs is called Drexel Summer Mentorship — it’s a summer camp similar to RSI in that students are assigned faculty mentors and are given research to do. Similarly, the cost of the program is almost entirely free (about 150$ dollars for three weeks). The selectivity of the program is a bit higher than payed programs (approximately 60 people applied, 30 were admitted) and the application asks for SAT scores and four 500 word essays. This program did offer me free food and research to do.

The motivation of the program is to attract students to Drexel’s engineering programs. And they do so very well — many college snobs would be surprised with Drexel’s campus and programs. One of the most powerful marketing tools of universities is to get students on campus; everyone from guidance counselors to admissions officers knows that students who visit campus are much more likely to attend that university. Drexel has done a phenomenal job at capitalizing on this: it costs approximately 100,000$ to house and feed 30 students for three weeks. However, many of the students that shared the opinion that they would either not apply at all or would apply and not attend change their opinion of the school. For the price of a fancy car, the Dean of Engineering has attracted the attention of students that have either did not even know of or were not even considering Drexel University.

When I applied to the program, I was excited about the prospect of free food. Was it good? Yeah. Was there a lot of it? Yeah.

But is anything really free?

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