My experience at the University of Pennsylvania

This summer, I had the honor of participating in a 6-week pre-college program at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). This program is run by Summer Discovery, and allows high school students to get a taste of college life.

There, I took the Introduction to Biology 101 course and lab course, which was worth 1.5 university credits. My schedule looked like this: (pink is lab class, yellow is lecture)

This course covered three broad topics: Cell Biology, Genetics, and Plants. In respect to tests and quizzes, this class got an open-book quiz every class, 3 midterms and a final. Additionally, we had pre- and post- lab assignments and lab quizzes that all went into our grades. (This was not the case for the other courses that Summer Discovery students took). The material was not everything that AP Biology covered. There were extremely specific things that students were expected to memorize, such as the 10 steps of glycolysis.

Our time otherwise was free. We were able to sign up for activities every day, which were exclusive to the Summer Discovery participants. Some of these included free smoothies, mini golf, laser tag, and much more. We had conference dollars, which gave us free meal swipes. But my friends and I wanted to discover new foods, so we ended up going to restaurants within University City (area where UPenn is located). I especially enjoyed White Dog Cafe.

Every week, except the last, there were weekend trips. On these trips we were given certain boundaries where we were allowed to do anything we wanted. We went to New York the first weekend, then Hershey Park, then Ocean City, New Jersey, then Washington and Georgetown. I especially liked the New York trip, and coincidentally I took a picture at the same position on the Top of the Rock observatory this time as I did in March.

Overall I really enjoyed the program and I would definitely recommend it to other people. Summer Discovery has pre-college programs at other campuses as well, and if they are as good as my experience at UPenn, I would love to go!