Tatyana Fortune

The summer after senior year, I was invited to participate in the Calculus Bridge Scholars Program at my future college. It’s a paid 6-week program with a 2-week residential part where you live in the dorms on campus, eat in the dining halls, meet professors and administrators, and get introduced to RPI overall. We got a little taste of what college life would be like in advance. Most students just called it Math Boot Camp, because it was fun but mostly challenging. The program was geared towards students who hadn’t taken Calculus in high school because Calculus I at RPI is known as the class that weeds out the students that won’t succeed at RPI. Basically, if you fail Calculus I, you are less likely to graduate successfully in four years.

For the first time, I was learning about derivatives and integrating, and the best part was the ability to work and study in very small groups. I was paired up with 3 other incoming freshman for the program.  Our schedule consisted of early breakfast, class until noon, lunch, class until dinner, and then free time on nights and weekends. They also sprinkled in seminars on other topics like career development, time management, and LinkedIn profile building. I established many relationships during this time that I continued to build upon during my four years at RPI.

The program was partially funded through the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation and the National Science Foundation, which focuses on increasing the number of underrepresented students in STEM fields that are qualified for programs of graduate study.

If you’d like more information about this program, their website is https://success.studentlife.rpi.edu/bridge or you can email bridgescholars@rpi.edu.