Summer Program Results (Summer 2026)

In less than ten days, I depart Korea for the quirky rural campus of Hampshire College. An “intense encounter with college-level mathematics” is said to be hosted among fantastic peers, great faculty, hiking, frisbee, and yellow pigs (the mascot of the program). HCSSiM – or simply Hampshire, as the alumni call it – is one of the oldest and most renowned summer math programs in the United States.

I am extremely eager to attend, and feel very lucky to have been accepted. The acceptance letter in April was one of the most rewarding moments this year, especially looking back on the time I spent on summer program application. As my first such experience, the application took most of February and March to complete.

I applied to four renowned summer math programs: Ross, PROMYS (Programs in Mathematics for Young Scientists), HSMC (Honors Summer Math Camp), and HCSSiM (Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics). While each program had its flavor of application, the process was largely similar. Most require personal essays plus solutions to a problem set. The problems are publicly available weeks before the application, and are to be solved independently under the honor of the applicant.

HSMC was the only program that did not have a problem set, and had the earliest deadline. After a few hours of essay writing and a rather quick proofreading session, I submitted my application. I spent the following weeks working almost exclusively on PROMYS and Ross problems. These inquiry-based questions were truly a joy to solve, yet also felt exhausting – each part of the question demanded at least several days of work. I worked on both programs’ problems mostly in parallel, until I finally submitted my work near the end of February.

By the time I started work on HCSSiM, I already had two rejection letters from HSMC and PROMYS. The latter was particularly disappointing, as I managed to solve all the problems with confidence and sent detailed explanations of how I reached the solution. But rejections were rejections, and I hurriedly handwrote the solutions for Hampshire’s problem sets. I finished all my applications by late March.

While I was awaiting a response, Ross decided to put me on the waitlist. Although chances of getting off the waitlist were very thin, I still felt rewarded. Considering the competitiveness of applicants and my being a high school freshman, this was still a statisfying return. Yet knowing all this, I was somewhat saddened simply because I wanted to join some sort of a summer program’s the atmosphere, one in which I could do great math among great people.

Then came a strange email from HCSSiM with the subject line “Yes, please soon, Aiden Ghim.” The email was personally written by the program director, and kindly pointed out some shortcomings in my problem set response. As the mail asked if I was interested in revising the errors, I eagerly submitted a revision in two days. The sleep deprivation was clearly worth it, and I received an acceptance email (“Yes, please Aiden Ghim”) shortly afterwards.

I am thankful for the support from my family and my math teacher, who incredibly wrote four letters of recommendation. Now I wonder where HCSSiM will take me in the coming month.