Are summer programs all worth the price?

Four weeks at the COSMOS summer program at UC San Diego came down to the success of one meticulously designed machine for junior Suneel Belkhale. He had spent the dozens of hours prototyping it, designing it and piecing it together with sensors and actuators that guided two differently colored marbles through their respective tracks.

As he watched, each marble bounced between plinkos and around spirals and embarked on a final double loopty-loop before reaching spinning disks and the chain that brought it back to the top. Success. His design worked.

This Rube-Goldberg machine was part of Belkhale’s final project at COSMOS (California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science), a summer program centered on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The project applied physics and practical calculus concepts that Belkhale had learned in his intensive Kinetic Sculptures class there.

With more and more students interested in STEM fields, COSMOS has become a popular summer program option. It boasts a relatively reasonable tuition fee of $3,100, including room and board and spans four-weeks. The residential camp is hosted at one of four UC campuses (Santa Cruz, San Diego, Davis or Irvine).

The camp is notorious for its selective application process, which includes submitting official transcripts, teacher recommendations and answering short answer questions. For instance, UC Davis receives almost 1,200 applications but has only enough space for 200 students.

The main goal of programs like COSMOS is to allow students to branch out of the traditional classroom setting and focus on a specific subject that sparks their interest. But are these expensive programs are worth the cost? Some camps such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Summer Academy in Applied Science & Technology (SAAST) can cost up to $8,000.

For Belkhale, COSMOS was a rewarding experience and worth the cost because of the unique activities, facilities and people he was exposed to.

“The camp is all about STEM and giving students a glimpse into what specializing in a particular field would be like,” Belkhale said. “I learned some essential math, engineering and teamwork skills in an environment that made it fun and constantly engaging.”

Senior Carolyn Sun attended Yale University’s Young Global Scholars (YYGS), a two-week summer program that cost $5,000. Sun attended the program’s new session, Science, Policy and Innovation (SPI). She explored environmental science and policy through lectures and seminars.

The program’s aim is to expose students to different topics through 14 lectures and seven seminars and help them decide what they were interested in. For Sun, the program failed to live up to its prestigious name and excellent reputation.

“I expected the seminars to be led by professors,” Sun said. “Instead, [they was mostly led by] Yale students and alumni. The professors lectured, but didn’t lead the seminars.”

Sun said the most enjoyable part of the program for her was its social aspect.

“I think I learned the most from the group projects that we worked on at night, after [all the] seminars and lectures, since we had to do lots of research,” Sun said.

Sun said the program taught mostly about policy rather than “hardcore, hands-on science and math.” The seminars focused primarily on the global food crisis, fracking and nuclear energy.

“I learned a lot, but I wish there was less policy and more hands-on science, like labs,” Sun said. “A lot of material was crammed into two weeks, [and] I think it should have been better spread out [so] that we could let the information soak in [more].”

Similarly, other students chose to spend their summers in humanities-focused programs.

Senior Michelle Luo participated in the Human Rights and Advocacy field studies course at Duke University’s two-week Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP). The program’s tuition was $3,650, and Luo’s course there explored human rights as well as advocacy and support for the public. Luo said that the course entailed learning about the United Nations and declarations it has drafted, such as the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as learning how to advocate for strong beliefs.

Luo collaborated with fellow students on a campaign promoting awareness of the overlooked genocide happening in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. She and her classmates created Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter pages to share important information and articles about the topic.

Luo enjoyed the chance to create memorable friendships.

“[Participating in Duke TIP] ended up being one of the best choices of my life,” Luo said. “The cost [did] not really matter [when one considers] the unforgettable memories [I made] with so many wonderful people who share the same passions as [me].”