ASSIP Essays Guide 2025-2026

ASSIP is a highly competitive and intensive summer research program that accepts high school students age 15+ who have already demonstrated aptitude for research. Its inclusion on an applicant's resume carries a lot weight in the college admissions process. As a result, it is an opportunity that all high school juniors with who have been challenging themselves as much as they can in STEM should apply for. Unlike other programs, they don’t give a word or character limit for the essays that they ask for. However, we recommend that you aim for 300-500 words for each of them. This article will tell you how to approach the numerous essays that they ask you to write as part of your application.

1. Describe work/volunteer experience

For this essay, start with a vivid anecdote that draws the reader in by describing something impactful you did at work or while volunteering. Throughout the essay, clearly convey your impact by citing quantitative figures that demonstrate your success. Try to unite all of your work and volunteer experience under a common goal or theme. Include a brief vivid personal anecdote detailing the origin of this common goal or theme that is present in your work/volunteer experience. Note, if you did any STEM work for a non-profit or even a local business, that counts as volunteering. You don't need to include everything, only discuss experiences where you made notable contributions. Finally, conclude by explaining how these experiences have shaped you as a person or influenced your aspirations as a researcher in STEM.

2. List any Hobbies, Curricular and Extracurricular Activities, and Leadership Positions:

Don't overthink this one. It is literally just a list. No explanations, no narrative, just a list, and a test on whether you can follow directions or not. Curricular activities include classes you have taken outside of normal high school, such as community college classes, online classes, accredited or not, and certificates you acquired.

3. List any Awards you've received:

This is very similar to the previous question, but beyond listing the awards, provide quantifiable information about how exclusive they are, such as how many people were eligible to be considered and how many received the award.

4. What do you hope to gain by participating in the ASSIP program and why?

ASSIP clearly states in their application what they want students to gain from the program. See: “Which of the following skills are you most interested in improving over the course of an ASSIP internship?”

For this essay, you should select one or two of those skills, or other foundational scientific skills that are indispensable for any aspiring researcher. Once you have those skills in mind, the essay needs to accomplish two core objectives.

First, open with a vivid depiction of a meaningful personal event, an experience that motivates your desire to become a career scientist whose work has real stakes and practical relevance for improving lives or advancing the human condition. From there, explain how that event sparked your interest in science and mathematics, and how those fields helped refine the long-term goal that originated from that pivotal moment.

Second, provide a clear and engaging description of the technical challenges you have faced while pursuing science with that goal in mind. This is the place to reference the specific technical skills that ASSIP lists in their application. Show how, in light of your current experiences, these are the skills in which improvement would have the greatest impact on your ability to tackle future research problems.

Conclude the essay by demonstrating the near-term impact you hope to achieve as a scientific researcher, showing how the strengthened skills you will gain through hands-on research under a professor’s guidance will better equip you to solve real scientific challenges. Alternatively, you may end with a “full-circle” moment, explaining how developing these skills will allow you to reinterpret or re-evaluate the pivotal experience you shared at the beginning of the essay.

5. Describe an area of science, computing, technology, engineering or math that interests you and why you would like to participate in that research area:

I would start this essay with a strong personal anecdote that enables you to establish an emotional connection to this area. Then introduce the area and explain how this anecdote gives you a personal connection to it. From there, nerd out about the topic and explain, without directly addressing the reader, why they should care about it as well. You want to make the reader believe we need more people studying this topic and why you should be one of them. Finally, conclude by discussing what it would mean personally for you to further explore this topic in college or to use the knowledge from studying this topic to tangibly improve the world in some way.

6. Describe a creative idea you had on any topic. This can include but is not limited to how you creatively solved a problem or developed a new idea:

For this essay, you want to give the reader a front-row seat to how your mind works when you’re tackling something. “Creative” can mean solving textbook problems, Olympiad problems, making art, journaling, writing, cooking, playing or composing music, or even social engineering. In addition to demonstrating how the gears in your mind turn when you’re engaged in something you genuinely enjoy, describe how this creative endeavor has shaped you as a person or enriched your understanding of your main academic interest.

If you can frame the essay with a narrative that shows how expressing your creative side contributed to your growth, one that clearly presents a compelling before-and-after picture, you’ll have a truly distinguishing response. If you can’t demonstrate a powerful before-and-after, then focus your conclusion on what this creative practice will mean to you moving forward, especially as you become busier and take on more responsibilities.

7. Describe a specific skill set of yours that you believe will be helpful in completing an independent scientific research project in a discipline that interests you:

For this essay, you can focus on either a single skill or a coherent set of skills. As with all essays of this nature, specificity is essential. Being vague, overly whimsical, or “cute for the sake of being cute” will not suffice for a serious research program like ASSIP.

Appropriate skills to highlight might include: generating insights from data; developing methodologies for determining which questions are worth asking (hypothesis formation); cultivating a love of mystery and tackling problems without obvious solutions; interrogating the presuppositions underlying a scientific problem; navigating peer-reviewed literature; quantitative reasoning; skillful dimensional analysis; possessing a broad or niche body of scientific knowledge; coding; or working with specific laboratory equipment.

The key to a persuasive essay is not telling the reader that you have these skills, but showing them by illustrating how you apply these abilities to real scientific problems. I recommend writing this essay in the first person, guiding the reader through how you developed particular skills, what motivated that development, and how you applied them in past science projects or research opportunities available to you.

If you want help applying to ASSIP or any other summer research program, or would just like someone to help you strengthen your overall extracurriculars, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today.