A sneak peek at campus

“The goal of FSI is to assist freshmen and their transition to Princeton,” explained Assistant Dean of the College Diane McKay, director of the program. “This program is for students whose transition is a bigger step from high school than it is comparatively for other students.”

McKay explained that students who are invited to attend FSI fall under three broad categories: incoming freshmen who went to high schools with few advanced classes, students who are the first in their families to go to college, and students from less-advantaged backgrounds.

McKay did not indicate that varsity athletes are a target group for the program — “some” athletes attend the program, she said, adding that the number varies from year to year — but some students who have attended FSI said the program was dominated by athletes.

“I’d say over 50 percent were athletes,” Matt Sanner ’13, a varsity soccer player, said of his FSI experience. “There were a lot of football guys and some basketball and lacrosse players as well.”

Eighteen freshmen on the football team, or 58 percent of the freshmen on the team’s roster, attended FSI this year, said Zack Glatter ’13, a varsity football player and FSI attendee.

Ugochukwu Udogwu ’13, who also attended the program, estimated that roughly two-thirds of the participants were varsity athletes. Katie Rodriguez ’11, who attended the program in 2006, said she thought roughly one-half of the program participants in the year she attended were varsity athletes.

Program participants are chosen by a committee of administrators who evaluate files forwarded by the Office of Admission. McKay said that committee members take into account a variety of factors, including academic background and socioeconomic status, when deciding whom to invite.

“This program is designed for students who are less advantaged, which is why we don’t have an application process,” she explained.

Of those invited, roughly 50 percent choose to attend. “While this program is strongly encouraged, it is not a mandatory program,” McKay said. “Unlike similar programs at other schools, there is no element of compulsion in FSI, which is why we try to reach out. We follow up invitations with phone calls to students and parents and try to convince parents to feel good about the decision to have their kids leave home early.”

Once on campus, participants take two seminar-style courses taught by Princeton professors for full credit: One is a quantitative reasoning-based class in statistics or calculus, and the other is HUM 250/STC 250: Ways of Knowing, an interdisciplinary course examining epistemology and cognition.

“Ways of Knowing is a course that examines how knowledge is created and how scholars know what they know,” McKay said. “We see it as the most exciting point of entry into the scholarship that is the cornerstone of a Princeton education. It gives students a broad overview into all the possibilities and expectations they’ll encounter.”

Sanner praised the program for allowing students to begin working on fulfilling distribution requirements before the school year even starts.

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“It’s a nice cushion to have coming into school,” he said. “It gives you the ability to take classes you want to take. If you can’t handle the load, you have the flexibility to drop classes.” Sanner explained that, because of FSI, he was able to drop his physics class and take only three courses this semester without falling behind in his courseload. Rodriguez noted that it was “nice to have math out of the way.”

Udogwu, who said she came from a high school that only offered one Advanced Placement course, also said the program helped her adjust to life at Princeton. “It prepared me for my writing seminar,” she explained, “because we were writing papers in FSI every week.”

Sanner also said the program helped ease his transition to college life.

“It gets you into the groove of Princeton by taking away the first shock,” he explained. “It’s better dealing with the shock when you’re taking two classes as opposed to a full load. It was an easy transition for me because I was in direct contact with professors and got to know them really well.”

But Rodriguez said she still found the transition challenging, even after completing FSI. She explained that she wished she learned time management skills while she was taking part in the program.

“It was nice to be able to meet people, but it wasn’t actually Princeton,” she explained. “It was still overwhelming in the fall because there were a million activities and I was still unaware of how much work I’d have to do.”

McKay said she believes FSI, with its intense academic work, adequately prepares students for academic life at Princeton by providing realistic expectations and methods for achieving success.

“Students are exposed earlier to campus resources, and as such, become more firmly rooted members of the community,” McKay explained, but she also said that cramming 12 weeks of work into seven leaves little free time for participants.

“By the end of three weeks, everyone’s already very tired,” McKay noted.

“It was an intense program,” Sanner added. “I was in my room writing papers most of the time.”

FSI students also attend a once-a-week colloquium, in which University professors speak about their disciplines and relate their work to what students are studying in class.

“Colloquium was a big hit because of all the fantastic teachers,” McKay said. “It really changed the range of possibilities open to [the students].”

“It was great that we got to hear guest professors lecture, because their lectures were usually relevant to what we were studying in class,” Sanner noted. “We had Bonnie Bassler [from the molecular biology department] and Eddie Glaude [GS ’97, of the religion department] speak to us.”

The Ways of Knowing course and the colloquium are relatively new features of the program, which traces its roots back to 1995. The Summer Scholars Institute, as it was called then, was originally affiliated only with the engineering school, and it only included science courses in its curriculum. In 1998, after three successful years of the Summer Scholars Institute, administrators decided to create a humanities-based summer program, the Freshman Scholars Program. In 1999, the two programs were united to form FSI.

From 1999 until last year, students had the option of focusing on the humanities or the sciences, and, as such, students followed different curriculum tracks. The two tracks were merged into one in 2008, and students were required to take a common curriculum regardless of interest.

“We chose to integrate the tracks in response to the challenges and changes of Princeton’s curriculum,” McKay explained. “Many departments now require rigorous quantitative requirements, and by requiring all FSI students to take a QR [quantitative reasoning] class, they will be equipped with the problem-solving skills to succeed.”

FSI also provides its students with opportunities outside the classroom, including a variety of co-curricular programs such as weekly lab tours, Writing Center sessions and activities organized by RAs, who are Princeton undergraduates given free room and board in exchange for their help with FSI.

“In a way, FSI is a mini-college in that it has many features of residential college life,” McKay said. “Students form strong bonds of friendship with RAs, who they continue to consult during the year, and each other.”

FSI was “a good way to meet a lot of people,” Sanner noted. “I met a good group of kids I’ll stay friends with for four years.”

“The whole fall [of freshman year], a big part of my friend circle was FSI [attendees],” Rodriguez explained. “I still keep in touch with a few people.”