USNA Summer STEM Program

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DantheMan

5-Year Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2014
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Hello, I am new to this forum. Anyways I have a few questions about the Summer STEM Program. A little background info: I'm 13 (rising 9th grader), live in Connecticut, male, and middle class.

Overall, exactly how competitive is the program to get into?
What are the admissions officers looking for?
Is Connecticut a competitive area?
How good are my chances If I have straight A's?

Any other info would be great.

Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear back.
 
Welcome to the forum, DantheMan.

The Naval Academy receives thousands of Summer STEM applications each year. A few years ago, USNA received somewhere around 4,000 applications but only took around 500 applicants. Overall, it is a competitive program to get accepted to so you want to set yourself apart scholastically (you have straight A's, nice!) and in as many other ways as possible. I don't know how competitive Connecticut is but USNA's selection is based on geographic representation so they'll usually take the cream of the crop from each region. If you don't mind me asking, is there anything else that you feel sets you apart from the rest?
 
@GoNavy44

Thank you for the info.

To answer your question, I do take part in a lot of extra-curriculars, but none stem-related (baseball, swimming, cross-country, boy scouts), and I'm a minority (half Hispanic-half white). I haven't accomplished anything outstanding in these sports, but I have tried several new ones in the recent years. I could say I have exceptional grades, but that doesn't set me apart from the tons of other applicants with good grades as well, based on what I heard.
 
I am not sure what exactly the STEM application asks for but it's good that you participate in sports and Boy Scouts. It shows that you can handle your workload at school while focusing your attention on other productive things as well. You sound like a strong applicant to me.
 
I went to STEM twice, and was turned down the third time I applied. Of course I don't know for sure, but I think a lot of what they are looking for in an applicant is a desire to learn more about engineering, technology, etc. (You'll take sort of an intro class to pretty much every engineering area you can think of). In my applications, I just made sure they knew I was really interested in engineering (and the Academy), and would love the opportunity to learn more and see the Yard at the same time. As far as regional areas... I don't know. It seemed like I met someone from every state, and a few from overseas. I do know in my first year, I met about 8 people from Memphis alone, but only about 3 from sweet home Alabama. Hope this helps, and good luck!
 
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