Getting Into Top STEM Programs: Advice from a Stanford Admissions Officer

Webinar Transcription

2026-04-13 – Getting Into Top STEM Programs: Advice from a Stanford Admissions Officer

Lonnie: Hello everyone and welcome to CollegeAdvisors Webinar, “Getting Into Top STEM STEM Programs: Advice from a Stanford Admission Officer.” My name is Lonnie Burrell and I will be your moderator for this webinar To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we are first going to begin with a presentation and then we’ll have the opportunity to answer your questions through a live q and a.

If you are interested, please feel free to download the. Handout are the slides from this webinar by visiting our handouts tab. And at any moment when you have a question, you can go ahead and place that into the q and a tab. Alright, with that said, let’s now meet our presenter. Dr. Pam or Pamela, sorry.

Dr. Pam: Oh no, I prefer Pam, so that’s wonderful.

Thank you so much, Lonnie. Great to meet you all. Um, I am presenting this webinar today, I guess because, um, I have a PhD in neuroscience. Um, I went to Harvard as an undergrad. I studied computer science, um, at East Asia Studies. And then I went on to Stanford to get my PhD in neuroscience. Also did my postdoc in neuroscience and psychiatry.

And then, um, was a clinical faculty member in neuroscience and, um, psychology. I’m also an IEF judge. Um, I judge that. I’ve been doing that for a long time and I’ve mentioned students through the process. Um, so we’re gonna talk a lot about. What admissions offices are looking for when we are evaluating STEM applicants today.

Lonnie: All right. Well, thank you so much Dr. Pam. Before we get into this very exciting topic, we would like to know what grade are you in that allows us to really find moments to speak directly to our live audience. So, uh, Pam, I do have a, a question for you. What, what made you decide to receive your PhD? What inspired that choice?

Dr. Pam: Ooh, so many reasons. Um, I wanted to go to graduate school because I had big aspirations in mental health treatment. Um, I thought that the current state of the field, I still feel this, this way, um, isn’t quite up to people are suffering for a long time, um, before they get help. And sometimes the help is still not very timely, meaning the onset before you start to feel better, um, there’s a bit of a lag and I knew that in research, um, that the treatments were there, but it takes a really long time for it to hit the general market.

I’ll give you an example. When I was in graduate school, um, they were using ketamine, but that was over 20 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. Um, and it’s only now kind of being used and not super widely, but we had known about it for a very long time and we were running experiments for a very long time. Um, so that.

Lag is, um, means that people don’t really get access to all these treatments in a timely manner, and they don’t know about them. But, you know, we, we’ve been work, we have been working on them for a very long time, so that’s one of the reasons was to improve treatment and treatment options.

Lonnie: Nice. Wow. That’s, that’s very impactful and also insightful to our own audience as they are getting ready to start thinking about their, you know, future careers and the impact that they wanna have on our world and our society.

So, thank you for sharing. I’m gonna give you the responses to our poll. We have 62% of our live audience are in the 11th grade. Then we have 19% in 10th grade, 12% in the ninth grade. So we have representation from ninth through 11th grade, and then we have about 8% that are other. All right. So, awesome.

Lonnie: Yeah.

Dr. Pam: So largely juniors as they’re getting ready for the process.

Lonnie: Exactly. And you, I know Dr. Pam, you’re getting ready to share some great information with our audience. So with that said, I will turn it over to you to kick us off into your presentation.

Dr. Pam: So a lot of people ask, well, how do emissions officers read applications, um, differently from general emissions?

And will they know, will they understand, um, what I’m talking about if I write very specifically and use a lot of technical words? Um, I would say that, let’s start with from the top down. So, while general admissions looks for well-rounded students, or meaning they’re looking at all of the majors, um, stem reviewers like myself, um, we’re typically looking for really spiky students, um, who’ve already started doing STEM work.

Um, a lot of times I’ll hear from students that they like x, y, zed field, whether it’s physics, biology, chemistry, because they’ve taken the coursework. Um, and I would say that the coursework is a. Basis, meaning it’s just the foundation, but it’s not enough, um, to demonstrate your aptitude and interest in stem.

So while STEM AOS prioritize, um, advanced math, for example, calculus AP or IB math, um, and science coursework above all else, it’s not sufficient. I would say it’s necessary, but not sufficient. Um, so we’re evaluating the rigor of these specific classes more heavily than say your cumulative GPA. Um, I’m gonna dive deeper into this as we go along because I was out visiting colleges, um, here in Southern California, and I went to Harvey Mud and Caltech, and I’ll talk to you about what.

They, um, what they said. Um, and then in terms of your standardized testing, they’re looking very hard at your math scores versus the verbal. And rather than just a long list of extracurriculars, STEM reviewers are looking for this very clear spike or signal and a consistent focus in a single field. So whether it’s robotics, ai, some kind of research, um, we’re looking for achievements outside the classroom.

For example, placing in math competitions, um, publishing your research, participating in these really intense summer stem programs. Um, the juniors on this call may have been applying to these intense STEM programs. They tend to be. You know, full time, like meaning you’re, you’re there 40 hours a week for eight to six to eight weeks over the summer.

Um, so we’re looking for evidence of all of that when we’re reading your application. Um, so for example, if you’re a CS or engineering candidate, and I bet there are a lot of you on this call, um, there’s usually what we call this fingerprint of problem solving. So you may not have done formal research, you may not have done, um, computer science research or a specific like.

Major own program or something, but there’s usually a fingerprint of problem solving, um, throughout the application. And it also depends very heavily on, well, what’s been available to you? Um, because not everybody has access to hackathons or competitions in their area, um, or even in their state. Um, we can talk about some examples I have of students who didn’t have access to those opportunities and what they did to overcome them because they did end up getting, um, this past year into schools like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, um, without having all of those things.

Um, and then we also are looking really closely at the fit to majors. So meaning, is there a clear connection between what you say that you care about and that you want to be studying and then the evidence for, do you even have those experiences to fit what you’re saying? A lot of times I meet students and they say they really want X, whether they’re X is material science or physics, but then they don’t have anything to back up this interest aside from coursework in school.

So I’m gonna move ahead to the next slide. Um, so in terms of personal traits that you want to be demonstrating, um, when you’re applying for STEM majors, I would say that this advice was given to me as well when I was going through the process. Um, the number one thing is resilience, and that’s really important, especially for PhDs because science is really hard and no experiment or robot or device that you build, um, will necessarily go smoothly.

Um, so SIP is a program out in California. It’s called the. UC, Santa Cruz Science Internship program. And up until a few years ago, they used to have this question as part of their summer application process. So they said, as an SIP intern, you will be conducting and contributing to cutting edge research.

This process is inherently fraught with challenges that may ultimately lead to null results. What experiences, skills, and or resources do you have to overcome these potential challenges? So, because I mention students a lot throughout the, um, science fair process, they often wanna give up or they feel really discouraged when the thing that we’re working on, um, may not be working or they’re not getting the results that they, um, are looking for.

Or there’s a lot of noise a a lot of times in the data and there’s no clear picture emerging. I would say that’s really common in science. Like that’s, that’s just science. Um, so the projects don’t always go according to plan. You’re gonna. Encounter a lot of setbacks, and sometimes it’s not just your first one or two attempts, but all 12 of them might fail, but it doesn’t mean that you should give up.

And so we’re looking for students who are not gonna get frustrated. And what this question from SIP was demonstrating is, are you the kind of student who can come. And you may spend the entire summer doing something and it may not lead to a publication or it may not lead to, um, a positive outcome. It might have a null result.

So meaning your work didn’t really prove or disprove, um, what you set out to, um, I guess prove in your hypothesis. But will you give up or do you like that kind of challenge? And do you have the mindset to keep continuing, um, thinking about, you know, how else can I tinker or, um, adjust my experimental setup so that.

Maybe that’s the problem, as opposed to saying, well, this didn’t work out at all and this failed, and I don’t wanna keep going. So admissions officer wanna see how students react to these kinds of setbacks and utilize their critical thinking skills and problem solving. Um, and more importantly, your ability to collaborate as part of a team to resolve the problem.

So right now, uh, in many scientific fields, it’s pretty much a team sport, meaning because it’s such a large experiment or it’s really complicated, or because you need experts to weigh in on many different, um, parts of your experimental setup, you are always working with other people. Um, for the most part, I would say that, you know, it’s not so much a just you and your mentor, um, kind of experiment.

I mean, sometimes that’s the case, but not always.

The other personal trait that we really love seeing is something called intellectual vitality. Um, so we love students who assume significant responsibility for their own learning process, meaning it’s very passive and easy to go to school and to take the classes that are given to you and that are part of your curriculum.

But I use someone who decides, you know what? My school doesn’t have this, or I couldn’t find X, Y, Z. So I’m gonna go and figure that out myself and I’m gonna teach that to myself or find ways to learn it. So are you going well beyond the scope of school assignments? Are you pursuing formal and informal learning outside of school?

Um, are you engaging in original research? Are you starting, um, passion projects or impact projects? Are you entering competitions like the Olympiads? Um, I’m, when I say olympiads, I don’t mean the science Olympiad, I mean the bio, the chemistry, the physics, the computing, um, earth science, astronomy. So these are the individual science olympiads.

The science Olympiad as a whole. And then are you engaging in advanced or self-directed studies? So if your school doesn’t offer it, are you trying to find it in a community college? Are you finding it in a college over the summer? Um, how is it on YouTube? Like how are you learning about this? There’s also schoolhouse, um, that colleges like Caltech really like, um, and then, you know, don’t just join a robotics club, but take your robotics knowhow and all the skills that you’ve developed and create and go.

I’ve had students who’ve done a lot of robotics and I told them, why don’t you take that learning? And, um, we have NASA out near us in the Bay area, so, you know, I said, go, go join NASA for the summer and intern with them. And one of them worked on, um, the Miles Rover, um, over the summer as opposed to, um, just doing robotics all four years.

So that’s something else that you can think about in terms of assuming responsibility for your learning process. Another, um, stereotype that I would say in terms of personal qualities that, um, admissions offices often see when we’re evaluating STEM applications is that, um, sometimes the narrative can, can be really robotic and flat.

So if you have an Olympiad kid, um, they tend to wanna write all about the Olympiad, uh, whether that’s the math problems that they encountered or the studying that they had to do. And I would say, I think I would try to showcase a different part of myself. So if you’re already part of the team or you’re part of the training camp, um, we will know that about you, but you don’t have to tell us about the problems that you solved necessarily to be part of the team.

So you wanna try to engage in activities outside of just stem, um, and demonstrate other skills to us like communication. So. Communication and science as, as we know, right as we’re seeing, is really, really important. So if you are a CS applicant, then being able to communicate your science to a lay audience is a really invaluable skill.

Um, it’s also really important, your essays, um, and then having hobbies are important. They reveal your personality, the things that you love, um, any kind of quirks that you might have. And there is a reason why a lot of STEM-focused colleges still wanna know, um, what you do simply for the pleasure of it.

So this is from MIT and this is one of their essays, which shows up also in summer applications, um, which shows you how much they care about this question. Um, so they say, we know from reading your applications each year that asking people what they like to do for fun is a fantastic window into their world.

It’s a rare and wonderful thing to get to read about the joys of others. So here are some examples from them. Um, this is from them in particular. These are their admissions officers saying this. Um, one word, dance. I will dance anywhere at any time, whether it’s a party, a supermarket in line, my room at 3:00 AM I absolutely love.

Dancing is one of the purest, most authentic ways for me to express my emotions. Hip hop, afrobeats, soka, bachata, Debo, Zumba, uh, swing. I love so many different styles of dance. Um, I’m smiling because a lot of times, um, when I read these pleasure essays or what do you do for fun or what do you do? Uh, what brings you joy?

I don’t feel joy when I’m reading it. And I would say that that’s one way to kind of not stand out is, um, you’re trying to assume that this is what the admissions officer wants to see. Like, I love, um, interpreting, I don’t know, um, history narratives. Um, if I don’t feel joy reading it, then it feels forced.

Like, you’re telling me this because you want me to be impressed, but I can tell that you don’t find joy in it. So this second one, see if you find joy in, um, in reading or hearing about this, I glide out in the ice in the 10 degree Vermont winter morning. I can see my breath and my fingers are already starting to go numb, but I have the biggest smile on my face.

I’ve been playing hockey since I was about four years old. One of the very few skaters with the ponytail sticking out of their helmet. Being on the ice is an escape for me. There’s no schoolwork, work or personal commitments on my mind. Um, so all of these kinds of essays and these little windows into who you are, um, get to help us get to know you beyond just your academics and your numbers, so they reveal your personality and show that you can find joy and balance in your life, which is something that admissions officers are also looking for, even if you are a STEM applicant.

Um, I’m gonna talk a lot about courses right now because that’s a really big part of, um, the core curriculum, um, especially at STEM heavy schools. So you wanna try to take the most rigorous stem, so that’s physics C Um, if you’re on the AP curriculum, math through Calc bc, um, AP bio, AP chem, um, whether that’s AP, IB, or honors available to you in high school and you wanna do well.

So when I say doing well, we’re expecting that you’re getting a four or five on the APs or a six or seven on the IB and then getting a’s if not, um, on those nu numeric systems. So the average unweighted GPA in science heavy schools, for example, MIT and Caltech is 4.0. Um, so you need to be at the top of your game at all times throughout high school.

Um, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so you’re keeping it up over the four years, ideally. So even if you don’t wanna study biology in college. Ideally, they want you to demonstrate that you can handle the challenges of multiple STEM classes, especially at the AP, IB, honors or upper level. Um, it helps us to know that you can handle the rigor at our institutions.

So I’m giving you an example here, um, of, this is a class schedule from Caltech. This is their first year. Um, so everybody going to Caltech takes these classes. Um, so I dunno if you can see, but they’ve got this, um, they’ve, they’ve planned out Monday through Friday and the coursework, um, and in red that is the only, um, non STEM class that a student at Caltech would be taking in their first year.

So it consists of calculus in one and multi variables and linear algebra. You’d also be taking chemistry, um, and physics. So classical, um, mechanics and electromagnetism. And you are taking also intro to computer programming, um, as part of that. So as you see, there’s not much I. Not balance, but it’s not very humanities focused.

It’s one humanities class and that’s the history of the Chinese empire. And that’s only on two days of the week. But on the other five days, as you see, your schedule would be really packed with STEM coursework. Um, so what that means is that they assume that when you get in, or one of the things that they’re looking for is that you are going to have the necessary, um, preparation at high school to be able to.

Hit the ball running or, you know, hit the ground running when you get into college. Um, so I’ll have another slide about that in a second. But in the words of Stu Shill, um, so this is about standardized test scores. So standardized test scores are another way, um, for STEM AOS to look at. How well are you prepared to come?

Meet the rigors of our curriculum, and actually it’s the faculty that are driving it. So it’s not this, um, it’s not just the centralized admissions office that’s saying, oh, we are reinstating, um, requirements for the SAT or the ACT or the APs. They want it because faculty were noticing that, um, when they took those tests away and became test optional, that the quality of the students and how prepared they were to meet the rigors of the curriculum, um, it was not quite there.

So, um, Stu was saying, our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT is significantly improved by considering standardized testing, especially in math, alongside other factors. There is no pathway through MIT that does not include a rigorous foundation in math mediated by many quantitative exams along the way.

So in a way, it is not surprising that the SAT or ACT math exams are predictive of success at MIT. It would be more surprising if they weren’t.

And then in terms of other schools, um, Caltech for example, says that SAT and ACT testing results are a standardized indicator of a student’s readiness for the academic rigor of Caltech. So here are some STEM heavy schools and their middle or median, uh, 50%, uh, SAT math score. So as you see it pretty much ceilings out.

Um, it’s almost 800. This is the median. So meaning it’s not at 75%, it’s not at 25%. This is the median. So in the middle, most people are, are scoring close to 800.

Okay, let’s talk about coursework. Um, because again, it is the basis and the foundation for that first year, and it’s something that we closely look at. Um, so what if advanced classes unavailable at your school, how can you demonstrate readiness? So the strongest STEM applicants actually tend to be students who take the initiative to learn outside of the classroom or carry that passion for STEM areas outside of school.

So it’s fine if your school doesn’t offer calc BC or multi-variable calculus or linear algebra or differential equations, but you can find all of those resources online. Some of them are relatively inexpensive and you can take those classes of your own volition and on your own time. Um, if you don’t wanna do that or if it’s really not available to you, um, like I said, find other ways to showcase this fingerprint of problem solving.

Um, and. Passion projects, uh, scientific experiments, um, I mean, it could be like daily things. For example, uh, some of my favorite essays have demonstrated scientific problem solving in a hotel room. So it was about a student who talked about, um, wanting to warm up their food, but there wasn’t a microwave.

Um, so what they did was they created this, um, insulating bucket. So they took the ice bucket and they filled it with hot water, and then they put the, uh, plastic takeout con container inside that warm, um, bucket. And that’s how they warmed up the food in a hotel room, which I thought was very clever and ingenious.

Um, so there are many ways to demonstrate your readiness, um, and, and applying scientific principles, um, in your daily life. So these students are not only scientists or mathematicians in school, but in their everyday life. So, for example, if you enjoyed the chemistry of cooking, you could start your own YouTube channel.

Um, if you really like gardening, um, you could start keeping field notes and put them on an Instagram page or start something around it. So I had a student who was really into gardening and, um, he created these, they’re called seed balls. Um, but what they do is they re um, they reinstate native plants into areas where, um, the biodiversity has been lost.

Um, so he used drones to drop these seed balls in different areas to replant native plants. So you can start in many, many, many ways that are not just, um, you know, aps or ibs or, um, honor classes in school.

So what are the kinds of activities or impact or metrics stand out on applications? Um, so obviously we love things like the olympiads. So this is the computing, the chem, the biophysics, computational linguistics, earth science, astronomy, um, informatics. These are all olympiads that exist. And you can participate in, um, isef, which is the science Fair or Regeneron, um, which is something for seniors, um, or publications.

So publications are great, but not all scientific publications are equal. So there are some high school ones that are not amazing, um, admissions offices know about those. Um, so I would ask yourself before publishing, is the citation available? Is it your work or was it, were you part of a mentors research team?

Um, is it peer reviewed or is it a high school journal? Um, and then even within high school journals, there are rankings, like in terms of which ones are better, uh, versus others. And then was there authorship on the paper? Like, were you on the paper at all or were you 13th? Which is fine. It’s great if you’re 13th on a large, um, mentor research team.

Um, and then what’s the journals impact factor? So an impact factor for journals, um, shows us its strength within a field.

And then what should students be highlighting in their personal statements? So, um, I think that in the caps, the common app personal statement, it’s a great place to highlight if you wanted to, um, the motivation or origin story of your STEM interests or passions. You don’t need to, um, you definitely don’t want your entire application to just be OneNote and be all STEM all the time.

Um, so it isn’t a hard and fast rule, but for example, that motivation may not. Necessarily belong in the Why major essay. However, what I think should belong in the why major essay is passion for the field, um, that you demonstrated through specific research and academic experiences. Um, and then you wanna connect these to your future goal and why you’re a good fit for this specific program.

So if you think about the why school, why major essays, they’re really at heart asking you what is it that you wanna do in the future and how can we help you to get there. So what that means is, so I see a lot that students will start to write, this is what I did. Um, so it’s a reasonable, like an extended resume.

I did this and I did this and I did this. Um, but that’s not really what they’re asking for. So how should a student, um, approach the Ys stem major essay? So. Especially at certain schools like Caltech, um, this is where you get to really nerd out and tell us why you’re so excited for your major. Um, so you wanna show us that you had involvement in STEM related activities and how you grew and evolved as a result of engaging in them.

Um, how and why you developed this interest, how it connects to other fields that you may be interested in, related to your major. And then depending on the length of the essay and the college, some colleges, for example, Yale, they really don’t want you to tell them all about Yale and the classes and the faculty and the opportunities that they have.

You only get a hundred words, so they wanna hear about you and not so much. Um, I know with other schools, like for example, the large Publix, you’re answering these why major essays and they, they’re expecting you to go do your research and look up classes and faculty and other opportunities that you might wanna get involved with.

At other schools, that’s not the case. Um, especially when it’s super short. Then they don’t wanna hear all about themselves. They wanna hear about you. Um, and then you wanna. Show us that you understand the implications of what you’re doing with your research. So is there anything ethical, um, that you might be pondering in your work?

Is there, um, you know, what are the downsides and the upsides if your work were to succeed? Um, telling us about and thinking about what are the implications of my research, um, shows us that you have that cognitive maturity to be a scientist.

And then how do you evaluate which programs might be a good fit for you? Um, so you wanna ask yourself, do I want to be in a STEM only program or a liberal arts program that offers stem? So even at a Stanford, my students who are studying computer science and engineering said to me, oh my gosh, did you know that I have to, um, have this writing class in my first semester?

And the first year? I’m like, yes. And they said, oh, it takes up so much time and now I don’t have enough time to go pursue all the computer science classes that I wanna take. Um, so you wanna ask yourself, is that something that’s okay with me, or do I really want to only take STEM classes? As you saw from the, um, screenshot of the Caltech program, there’s really only one humanities class, um, in a school like that.

And then it’s. The majority of the time, you’re only taking really, um, intense and hard stem coursework. So is that something that you want or do you want something a little bit more balanced? Um, so for example, um, the large Publix, they’re not gonna ask you to engage in extensive liberal arts programs. Um, so the ucs, the Georgia Techs, um, the Michigans, right?

Like if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have this liberal arts. Curriculum. Um, I would say that a school like Mite is a little bit different because they do expect it and they’re, they’re less, um, extreme, like in terms of their STEM only curriculum. They have something called HSA, which is the humanities, um, that they want you to be engaging with, um, in addition to your STEM curriculum.

So liberal arts colleges, for example, love when STEM students have other academic interests because they, it indicates that they take a broad range of classes. So Yale, um, Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford, I would say that we’re more in that range rather than, um, the hardcore stem for, so for example, when I was reading applications, if a student looked way too technical, we would often punt it to, MIT would say, you know, this isn’t good fit for us.

Um, let’s. Let’s let it go and, um, there’ll be a better fit elsewhere. Um, so liberal arts colleges are emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of their academics and learning and subjects that are outside your area of focus. Um, so you never know, right? At a liberal arts college. Um, and I don’t just mean the small liberal arts colleges when I say this, I mean all the schools that have a liberal arts type of curriculum, meaning there’s a core, but the core is not like a Caltech core, where, where it’s, you know, one year of chemistry, physics, biology, math, um, and computer science.

It. The core is you have to take arts, you have to take music, you have to take history, um, you have to take, you know, a science, but it’s not, um, like, for example, multi-variable calculus or something. But the point is that you might be able to find an area in the humanities that perfectly blends or makes your stem focus way better and can actually help you with your own research.

So when I was, um, training with my PhD, um, my mentor used to say, you know, you should take a zoology class because you’ll learn so much more about the human brain, um, by learning about zoology. And I was like, zoology, I don’t wanna take a zoology class. I work with humans. But he was right. And it was really, um, it was really helpful to my work because we can’t do a lot of things in humans that we can, um, with animal studies.

So in terms of final tips for students interested in stem, you don’t need to enter all the competitions and all the olympiads in order to be admitted to a sub top STEM college. I’ve had many, many, many students who got in to all these top schools and they didn’t do competitions like ISEF or olympiad.

You do need to show us depth, um, either through independent research or something that you did where you built something for school or your community to solve a problem.

Okay, so now we’re going to get to our q and a.

Lonnie: All righty. Sounds good. Dr. Pam, can you see me?

Dr. Pam:Yes.

Lonnie: Okay, thank you. All right, audience. So now we are going to move into our live q and a. And again, thank you, Dr. Pam, for this wonderful presentation. Now’s your time to ask your questions. A lot has been covered.

Um, again, if you would like to ask questions, please go to the q and A tab. And also, Dr. Pam shared a lot of information, so the slides are available for you. Download by visiting the handouts tab. All right, Dr. Pam, are you ready for the first question?

Dr. Pam:Yes.

Lonnie: All right. So the first question says what to do if you can’t land a summer research program?

Dr. Pam:Hmm. This is a common one because these stem. Research programs are so competitive and there’s not that many of them. Um, but we have partnerships, um, that set you up with summer research programs, I think, um, through poly gens. Um, and there are programs like that where you can get opportunities if you, if that’s something that’s available to you.

Um, other ways that you can land. Summer research is, I’m still on the, um, mailing list for, um, postdocs at Stanford. Um, I, I never got off the list, but there’s constantly people posting on there, um, like high schoolers saying that they’re looking for a lab opportunity. So if you get resourceful and there’s a local university near you, that’s a really good way to, um, look for something, um, that’s not necessarily published or, um, publicly available.

Lonnie, can you think of other ways that you might have. Suggesting to students that they get involved in some research. Yeah,

Lonnie: yeah. No, I think you, you, you definitely landed it. I love, you know, even mentioning that listserv again, asking a friend of a friend, asking your teacher if they know someone, just again, like networking as best as you can.

Um, being okay with not getting a response when you send an email. ’cause that could happen. Um, and that’s not, you know, and that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong, but I would just definitely say be persistent. Um, and I know that something will come your way. Yeah. All right, so we’re gonna move into the next question and it says, is it harmful to an application of the number of humanity courses APs taken is the same as the STEM courses, so basically the student has a good amount of humanity courses compared to the actual STEM courses, or should they have more STEM courses?

What do you think Dr. Pam?

Dr. Pam:You know, this is so frustrating because in admissions they always say this. Um, but it depends. Um, it depends on what’s available to you. It depends on the rigor of your STEM classes. Um, so I would be evaluating with a lens to a number of, I mean, looking at it a number of different ways, like.

Is it that the number of humanities, first of all, we wanna see rigor all across the board, right? So a lot of times STEM students will say, but why do I have to take a language for all four years? Like, I wanna take, you know, physics instead of, um, Spanish, or I wanna take biology instead of having to do history.

Um, and I would say that actually it’s a good thing because colleges wanna see, it depends on the college, but they want to see, um, a year of, um, I actually took a screenshot of this. I don’t know if I managed to upload it, but even at a Caltech, they’re looking at, um, a year of biology, a year of chemistry.

They want preferably three years of history. Um, so it’s not harmful actually. Um, and I think that stem, stem kids are really surprised by that. They’re like, what? I have to take history as well. I’m like, yes, yes, you do.

Lonnie: They want you to be well-rounded.

Dr. Pam:Correct. They want you to be well-rounded in high school because no offense to you guys, but you are not well educated yet.

It’s just, it’s just the beginning.

Lonnie: It’s just the beginning. Yes,

Dr. Pam:yes, absolutely. You can specialize later. But at, in high school, um, just like for example, the opposite is, um, a lot of my humanities kids say, why do I have to take physics? I’m like, you wanted to graduate high school without ever having taken physics.

Um, so in high school they want you to be well-rounded. So I I I would say it’s not necessarily I harmful, um, to have equal amounts of humanities versus STEM classes, but I haven’t seen the transcript. So it depends.

Lonnie: Okay. Awesome. Well, I think you gave a really good response to that question. We’re gonna move on and thank you audience.

The, the questions are, are definitely coming in. Uh, all right, so this question says, what grade would you say is too late to decide that you want to do a STEM career? An example, they mean like how late is it to start building your extracurricular activities, et cetera?

Dr. Pam:Oh, I’m a STEM optimist, so I would say that it’s never too late.

Okay. No matter where you are in your, in your trajectory, like whether or not you’re in, um, high school or beyond. I’ll, I know that’s not exactly what this student is asking, but I’ll give an example. Um, I was just reading about a professor in engineering saying that, um, her whole life she had been a linguist and, um, studied Russian and.

Then joined the military and realized that the interesting things that she wanted to do involved the people who are engineers and, um, scientists within the military. And so she retrained like, well in adulthood to become an engineer, and then she became an engineering faculty member. Um, so I would say it’s never too late.

But in terms of high school, I think what you’re asking is, well, but if I’m a junior and it’s spring, so let’s say now,

Lonnie: yeah.

Dr. Pam:And then I’ve discovered that I really, really love engineering. Um, is it too late now to decide that this is something that I want to do? And I would say, well, it depends. I know, sorry.

Um, if you’re applying to engineering schools, then if you don’t get in now to an engineering school, then it’s much harder to switch later on. Um, so I would use the summer to get going. But I dunno if that’s what the person was asking.

Lonnie: Yeah, I think so. But I love that you gave both perspectives. ’cause I too have friends who, um, you know, majored in the humanities or did a non-ST STEM major and then later on they did post-bac, they did a post-bac program and they took the classes that they needed in order for them to get into that, that master’s or that higher degree program.

So it’s never too late like Dr. Pam:. It’s never too late. Okay. Let’s see. How important is getting published? What if the student, student only interns in a local lab, how can the students showcase his experience?

Dr. Pam:It is okay if you don’t end up getting published, because honestly, um, I know there’s been a lot of emphasis in publishing, but in science it takes a really long time.

I mean, um, sometimes it takes years and years and years before you, your study is ready to be published for a number of reasons. It may have failed a lot of times. Um, and that’s normal, that’s science. Um, it, but it’s, it’s very atypical after six or eight weeks over the summer to assume that you will be published.

Um, because most research doesn’t move at that pace, that that’s really fast. Um, so, so that would mean that you’ve already got data and then you’re ready to analyze and maybe get it out the door. Um, not necessarily that you’re collecting data. So if you’re collecting data, it might take way longer than the summer.

So that’s why, um, a lot of STEM kits end up doing STEM research for a number of years because it takes a while. Um, and so it’s okay if you don’t get published.

Lonnie: Okay. Okay.

Dr. Pam:Yeah.

Lonnie: Great. Um, this next question, um, I’m, I’m gonna ask it. Uh, are there any universities or ivy leagues that are better for STEM than others?

Specifically science and math?

Dr. Pam:Yes. Um, some schools, for example, um, UChicago doesn’t have much of a, I know you said Ivy League, but you know, they don’t have an engineering program really. Um, they have a very specific kind of engineering one kind. Um, but it’s not the, the mechanical or, um, computer science and engineering that most people think of within the Ivy League.

I would say that, um, summer. More. It’s not that they’re better or worse, it’s just that they’re, their emphasis is different. Um, so for instance, uh, Harvard has an MIT as the backup, right? So we’re not actually, Harvard’s not amazing and they’re very clear about that. We don’t even have environmental engineering.

If you wanna do that, you would, we partner with MIT and you would go there and you would take your classes and do your work there. Um, so it’s not that we’re not better for stem, it’s just that there’s a partnership and we leverage that partnership because then we have the humanities. So then conversely, MIT students come to Harvard if they really wanna take, you know, a history class or human geography class or anthropology or something like that.

Um, so I know I’m, I don’t know if I’m answering the question, but I would say yes, there are some that are better than others.

Lonnie: Okay. Yeah, no, that is that, that was the question that was asked. And um, this next question, I’m not gonna fully read all the details of it, but basically, um. The audience member is asking, you know, what happens in a situation where maybe a student might have a challenging semester or quarter in high school due to an illness mm-hmm.

Which then starts to impact their ability to participate in extracurriculars and make their, you know, application really shine. Being that they had this challenge that happens, how does the odds of admissions kind of look like for, for that student?

Dr. Pam:So I am, I’m reading it, so I, I have some of the details.

Um, so again, it depends, but here in this specific example, it says that the junior was hospitalized. Um, so does that mean you weren’t going to school? So essentially you’re taking a leave of absence for a year and a half. Um, in which case maybe when you get back on track, um, you are catching up or is it that nothing has been paused in terms of school?

So the school. Kept going, um, but the extracurriculars stopped maybe.

Lonnie: Yeah. Yeah. Is

Dr. Pam:that

Lonnie: what it sounds like? They, it sounds like this person, they were still taking classes, um, but they weren’t able to like do the extracurricular activities.

Dr. Pam:Then I would explain that because, um, that’s what the additional information section is for in, um, the common app where you can tell us like what happened and we won’t hold it against you.

You don’t get penalized for that. Um, I’ve actually been on many cases where students had chronic illnesses and therefore their activities list there weren’t 10 because they were. I working through the chronic illness for a lot of that time. Um, one of them was congenital, um, others were eating sorters.

Um, and you know, we’ve seen a range of different things and it didn’t get held against them because it’s not their fault and they were still going through it. Um, so we take that context into mind when we’re evaluating the file.

Lonnie: Great, great. Well definitely, I hope that was helpful for the audience member that asked that question.

So there’s definitely still hope. Um, but definitely like you said, explaining that situation so that mission officers can know, uh, further context. Okay, so our next question says, is it helpful to upload an art portfolio for STEM or engineering program admissions? And this student does a variety of things like drawing, painting, sewing, crochet, which is really awesome.

I love that.

Dr. Pam:It’s really awesome. Um, again, it depends. So usually when we have the portfolios, um, the faculty evaluate those. Um, so are you evaluate, are you submitting a portfolio for drawing and painting? In which case the art faculty look at that. I would say that sewing, crochet, they don’t tend to look at that.

Um, but I’ve also had students who were engineering majors. Um, we uploaded an art portfolio because he was an environmental engineer and he had a lot of, um, different designs, um, that came about from designing gardens, actually. And when I saw it, I thought it was really beautiful and also shared, showcased the way his mind worked.

So we did submit that. Um, so I would say, you know. What would you like us to know about you or see about you from this art portfolio? So if you’re submitting it, um, is it just that you wanna show a different side of you? Um, and then when we’re evaluating it, we’re evaluating it based on, okay, can we bring in the student for this particular talent?

Um, so if it’s just a, oh, I just wanna show you my hobbies, maybe not so helpful. But if it’s a no, I think this actually could be really competitive and compelling. Um, and I’m a talented artist then. Yes.

Lonnie: Great. Awesome. Okay, we’re gonna move to our next question, which says, do you think a really time consuming but intense Wow, intense extracurricular, whoa, uh, such as an apprenticeship is better than a collection of various other extracurriculars.

Dr. Pam:It can be, again, it depends on what it is. Um, so I’ve had students who, um, worked really intensely and spent all of their time, um, coming up with inventions. Um, and two of them ended up selling their IP to, um, companies and to venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Yeah. And then there wasn’t much of an activities list beyond, you know, three or four activities, but it was at such a high level that they ended up getting in everywhere.

So it depends, right? If it’s really strong, maybe, um, but if not, then you run the risk of, you know, looking really, um, intensely focused on one thing. But if that one thing is not something they value, then that could be. Problematic.

Lonnie: Hmm. Okay. Okay, well, we’re gonna take a short pause. I wanna give Dr. Pam: a water, a short water break too.

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Increase your odds and take the next step in your college admission journey by signing up for. Free 60 minute strategy session and here is the QR code that is on your screen that you can scan and you’ll have the opportunity to meet with one of our mission specialists. During this meeting, you’ll receive a preliminary assessment of your academic profile, along with some initial recommendations on what you can do to stand out.

At the end, you’ll also learn more about the premium packages we offer that will pair you with an expert that can support you in building your college list, your essays, and much, much more. We are here for the whole process. Okay, so now we are going to move back into our question and answer. So we have a few more minutes to take, um, some questions.

So if you have that question you’ve been thinking about, now is the time to go ahead and ask it. All right, so our next question is, is it better to partake in summer research programs or work on independent projects that show commitment and interest in a certain field?

Dr. Pam:You, you guys are gonna hate me for keep, like using this phrase over and over again.

It depends. Um, so some independent projects, um, I guess you’d think about what’s the outcome? If it’s something like, um, oh, I did an in independent project where I, I don’t even know Lonnie, help me here. But, um. Okay. I, I’ve had, what I’m thinking about is a specific student who did this, but Okay. Um, I. I’ll give you two examples.

Um, they were okay in, in the STEM or science fair world. There are students who do things like, I’m going to grow plants in microwaved water versus regular water. And look at the effects on the plants of doing that. So would that be better than taking part in a summer research program? Maybe not. Um, because it’s not super, um, in depth.

However, um, if for example, you were doing, and my, one of my students did this this year, but, um, you are looking at. When a plant is injured, do they go on and communicate that injury to warn other plants around them, um, or other leaves, um, within that same branch. And then you’re doing a very sophisticated analysis by hooking up, um, different sensors and wires to plants to um, look at their response.

Then I would say that that independent project, um, is great for something like a science fair. So you can do your own independent research at home that shows a lot of commitment and then go on to enter into a competition. And would that be better than a summer research program? Potentially? Um, it depends on the summer research research program.

It depends on the mentor that you’re working with over the summer research program. It depends on is the work far long enough or are you at the beginning stages? Um, so there’s no one cut and dried answer to this. A lot of it is, comes down to, it depends.

Lonnie: Okay.

Dr. Pam:Alright. Sorry to add anything.

Lonnie: Yeah, I, I think, no, but I think the, the key with that is what you said is, is the depth, you know, and so is it really pushing you to think critically?

You know, like that’s very key. Hmm. Um, but you know, definitely, I think you gave a really great response to this question.

Dr. Pam:I think it’s questions because I think, um, the audience member has something in mind, but we’re hearing it at a higher level. Yes. So it’s not,

Lonnie: yes. Yeah, it’s very, it’s general. It’s general, which we appre, we appreciate too.

Um, but yes, if you have something specific, you have a few more minutes, you can go ahead and ask, which this one is. Um, this question says, are there any good summer programs, not necessarily research at Stanford for stem, especially in medicine. Um, can you specify.

Dr. Pam:Um, I guess simmer, it’s called, uh, it’s the Stanford Institute for Medical Research maybe.

Um, so, and then there’s a whole list. There’s an entire page that tells you about summer programs that aren’t research, um, at Stanford that are in medicine. Like there’s one for cardiovascular surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, I think is another one. Um, and then there’s one on surgical skills. These are not, none of these are, um, research focused, and then there’s one for AI and medicine as well.

Um, but there’s a page that, um, you can find if you Google it, um, that lists all of the programs at Stanford.

Lonnie: Yep, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Um, you just Google it, uh, which I just did. On the side, you will get the list of the different summer programs, especially those that are within the medicine field at Stanford.

Okay. Our next question, I heard that we shouldn’t indicate in the com in common app summer programs. Wait, let me read this question one time.

Dr. Pam:I know

Lonnie: common apps.

Hmm.

Dr. Pam:I know that’s like, huh.

Lonnie: I think that, so let’s see. I think that they’re trying to say, should they not put in their common app the summer programs that they went to at a university? Hmm. I’m gonna come back to that question. I’m gonna process a little bit more so I can clarify it.

Dr. Pam:I think they’re saying like, okay.

And Andre, feel free to correct us if we’re wrong. Are you asking like, if I went to a summer program at Harvard, but I really wanna go to Stanford, should I not tell Stanford that I went to this Harvard program? Um, because then what if they think I like them more? I’m like, no, it doesn’t matter. Because honestly, it’s, it’s, it’s hard to get a lot of opportunities.

So if you have one and it’s not, um, in the university that you want to be in, it’s fine too. It’s fine to go to somewhere else or for the summer, or sometimes people say, oh, but doesn’t it help? Or like, is it okay if I did research with a professor at Michigan State when I really wanna go to Georgia Tech?

I’m like, it’s totally fine.

Lonnie: It’s totally fine. Totally fine. Um, we encourage you. You should. You should. Yes.

Dr. Pam:You

Lonnie: should. Yeah. Don’t help. Don’t hide that. Um, yes. Okay. Thank you. We got it. Thank you. Thank you, Dr.

Dr. Pam:Hey.

Lonnie: Yes. Alright. Um, so our next question is, should we take the S-A-T-A-C-T or both? And then Dr. Pam:, you could see they kind of, you know, added a little bit more context below.

Dr. Pam:Okay. I would not take both. I would take one or the other and you should go take a practice test on either one and figure out which one you’re better at. Um, and then, because the, the university, the university only require one, not both. And um, I don’t know where this 1500 came from, but we actually have.

Buckets of scores that we care about. I’ll give you Caltech. I know, I, I know I keep bringing it up. I don’t know why, but just ’cause I think they’re very explicit and very transparent. But they say that for them, a tier one score is a 35 36. Um, so that’s almost perfect. Um, but beyond 35, they don’t even, they can’t tell whether it’s a 35 or a 36.

The admissions officer just sees as a tier one score. Same thing with like their, um, I think it’s 15, I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it might be like 1550 and above is tier one. And then they can’t tell is it a 1600 versus a 1550, um, but they just see the, the gradations. Um, so I would say that you wanna check with the universities, but for Stanford, for instance, a 34 and above on the A CT is a tier one, and then a 1540 and above is a tier one on the SAT.

So your scores are a. I would aim for, for that, whereas a 1500 would actually be the tier below.

Lonnie: Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Um, Dr. Pam, so remember the question that we, we were speaking about the independent research versus the summer. Oh yes. Research. I get that wrong. So we got a little more context. Um, okay. Thank you.

Thank you Daniel, for giving us more context. So it reads, I’m very passionate in computer science and I’ve already developed a mobile application. Impressive. Love it. I would like to continue developing a second one. I have in mind over the summer, both applications revolve around improving the lives of high schoolers.

Specifically, should I pursue this second application or look into summer research programs?

Dr. Pam:Ooh. Um, I don’t know what you’re doing to improve the lives of high schoolers specifically, but if it’s, I guess the, my, I have a couple of reactions. One is, um, you know, there’s a lot of people using AI to develop apps.

Nowadays. So what is different about what you’re developing versus what did you use AI to help you? In which case it doesn’t demonstrate that intellectual vitality or the thinking or the effort, the way that doing research might. Not to say that you don’t use AI and research, right? You might. Um, so it’s not necessarily an either or can it be a both and or why must it be either or, and then feel free to jump in if you have other.

Lonnie: Get this one, this one, Dr. Pam, this is your area of expertise on this one. Um, but I think this is like such a specific question that like, you know, definitely as we think about the work that we do here within CollegeAdvisor, like you’ll get paired with an counselor and advisor that will be able to really guide you with very, your specific questions.

Today we’re kind of more high level, um, and we’ll be able to really make a better, um, decision or our response based on more information that we’ll find out. But, um, I think Dr. Pam: got you, gave you some good information right now to get your mind going. Um, so thank you so much for, for asking that question.

And we’re gonna move into, I think our final question. And let’s see,

I’m gonna go back up to the top. Okay.

Dr. Pam:I would say too, um, while, while Lonnie’s looking that up, you know, um, if you speak to the, is it the admissions person? Um, at CollegeAdvisor, like in that one hour admission specialist mm-hmm. Yeah. You can talk to them too and give them your background and then they, then you’ll have a much, you know, they’ll have a much better sense than the minutes that we have here, um, to, to dive into your, your background and profile and they can help to advise.

Lonnie: All right. So this, um, yes, thank you Dr. Pam for asking that. I mean, answering that part of the question. So our last question is going to read how can students show, show strong fit to major if they’re still exploring different STEM interests? And we’ll say this is, you know, for a student that’s maybe in the, the ninth and 10th grade.

Dr. Pam:Yeah. Um, I would say that in ninth grade, I always use that as an exploration phase or year. Um, and it’s okay to not know at that time. However, I would say that in 10th grade and 11th, you really wanna start to narrow it down to two or three different areas and start to hone in on, okay, what’s my story going to be in a year from now?

Um, so in the beginning, it’s okay if you don’t know yet and you’re doing different things because those different things might lead you right. To what is it that you wanna be doing down the line? So if you are doing physics and chemistry and you’re like, you know, I kinda love them both, um, and then you are thinking, oh, maybe material science is the way to go, um, maybe that’s my, my interest.

It’s fine in the beginning if you’re still exploring. Um, that’s a lovely thing about stem. And while in high school we put stem into these different artificial buckets, all of science is really one continuous, um, learning process. So it’s not that as a neuroscientist, I never learn about, um, chemistry or physics.

I mean, I do, there’s a lot of that involved in it too. So I would say it’s okay to have these, um, different STEM interest.

Lonnie: Great. Awesome. Well, with that said, we’re now at the end of our presentation. Thank you audience for your positive feedback as well in the chat. Thank you, Dr. Pam, for all of this great information.

I’m pretty sure you all will see Dr. Pam in a future upcoming webinar. Thank you all again, and as you are exiting out of this webinar, there will be another opportunity to sign up, um, to meet one of our mission specialists to learn more about our program. With that said, everyone, have a great day our night, and thank you again, Dr. Pam, for your time.

Dr. Pam:Thank you. Good to see you guys.

Lonnie: Bye.

Bye.