My Nonprofit Reviews

I was one of the few who had to get online because of the travel restrictions. They have done a great job accommodating (not in its literal sense) us.

The meat of our online experience was an introductory cosmology course covering topics from Friedmann's equation to quantum gravity. Despite the difficulty of the content, our instructor maintained a balance between mathematical rigor and conceptual understanding which made the experience illuminating with manageable workload (the math for those topics in their purest forms are outright daunting for high schoolers).

But what I enjoyed the most was the spacecraft design project. To build our spacecraft, we had to start from scratch, learning from previous space missions in real life. The research process was extremely fun, as we got to understand different parts of the spacecraft. Yet because we were not constrained by budget, we could also use our imagination. I remember one group tried to use a super-powerful engine to get to the Oort cloud for exploration. Our instructor also gave us constant feedback and guidelines as to keep us on track and not feel intimidated.

Another gem of the program is the guest lecture. Researchers in different subfields of astrophysics talked about their personal anecdotes and career advices for us, all of which are incredibly valuable for high school students who are only aware of their interest but not necessarily of their future careers.

SSP definitely deserves a lot of praise.