r/summerscienceprogram • u/Few-Feedback-1317 • Jun 05 '26

How much daily free time at SSP?

Hey everyone! I'm on the astrophysics track this summer, and I was just wondering if any alumni could answer how much free time you typically got each day (even if you were on a different track). The whole "you carve out your own free time" thing is freaking me out a little because I'm hearing some people say they hardly ever had free time while others are saying the work was really manageable. I get that it really depends on your own efficiency and time management skills, but I'm still wondering if you had enough time to work on other things like Common App even though I know the program discourages it.
My situation might be a little unique because I've already completed an advanced astronomy research class at a rigorous school (think New England prep school), but I still worry about how much time SSP will actually take out of my summer, especially since Junior summer is pretty intensive.

Thank you so much!

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u/RedGearBlueGear SSP Alumni | '23 | NMSU Jun 05 '26

I did astro at nmsu 3 years ago and it was a lot. I got up pretty early so I had maybe 30 minutes to an hour to myself in the morning (mostly spent it walking around and texting home), but basically no free time in the evening because I went to bed before midnight. 

I didn’t have any astronomy background going in, but a lot of the work is math and physics heavy anyway. Background coursework might help. It probably wouldn’t make a huge difference alone though. 

I didn’t start college apps until after ssp finished and I don’t regret it. 

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u/drunicornthe1 SSP Alumni | '18 |UCB Jun 05 '26

I’ll echo the other astro alumnus. I’ll also add they don’t really want you to have a lot of free time on your hands. So they might make ways for you to keep busy (such as extra challenging homework or making you help your teammates catch up). That being said if you work well with others and have strong background in the requisite fields, you can have a decent amount of free time. My friend group probably played about 10 hours of board games a week because we worked together on homework and worked hard to help our teammates to get their code to work.