Got to talk to an ex-brown admissions officer about a few things, one of them being the prevalence of programs like Pioneer Academics, Lumiere research, etc.

These were sited as “eye-roll inducing” ECs by the officer. These are, for the most part, pay-to-play programs which are specifically curated for admissions, something you never want to come off as (doing stuff for admissions).

Of course there are caveats to every rule, many have been admitted with these programs because what matters is not just the EC, but the experience you get from it and what you can say about it.

Also, this was the opinion of one admissions officer, opinions will vary on it person-to-person.

(P.S, you’ll notice many of the top admits had either zero programs or just 1, maybe 2. Yet again not universal but it’s to show what matters more is what you get from the programs, not just doing the program for the resume)

So conclusion, if you’re doing what everyone else is doing, you’re setting yourself up for failure a lot of the time (stole this quote)