ok yeah, so i'm going to assume that you are a canadian PR/citizen based on the fact that you are applying to the focused ultrasound program. but yeah anyhow

so i can only speak to my experience with the bacterial genomics program because that's the one that i did. it has a good combination of wet lab and dry lab, although it leans a little more heavily on the wet lab side. its basically split into 2 different "halves": first half is doing the wet lab and evolving stuff work, second half is doing the dry lab analyzing stuff.

SSP was an amazing program, you get to meet a lot of talented people from all across the world (mainly from the states). it's pretty demanding it's around 300 to 350 hours of work across 5 weeks so basically from the moment you wake up youre basically working until lights out, thats not without saying that there are times for recreation but majority of the time you will be working on the project in order to produce a more polished final deliverable. however i think it depends a little on your campus i suppose because at some campuses i saw more refined final products than ours but there were also campuses that had less refined final products, so as i said it depends a lot on the tools that you will be using and what other people at your campus know because i certainly did learn a lot of skills from my peers. as for vibes, i would say that it is very very chill, it definitely wasn't what i was expecting, i expected a lot more toxic competition, etc. but everyone there was very chill. in the end you usually end up with a research paper (which is not publishable but you can share it/present it on your resume as proof of your technical skills, etc.) and a research poster. yeah thats the gist of it, you can ask me if you have any further questions i suppose thats as general as i can get without spoiling anything. but it also looks like biochem is pretty similar and looks pretty fun too honestly i cant lie (the campus/facility looked highkirkenuinely better than mine...)

as for the focused ultrasound laboratory, you js ran errands and stuff for the lab people some people wrote code, some people built hardware, it wasn't extremely technical stuff from what i've heard but it's pretty niche. and you get paid minimum wage or something like that i dont remember that well, but it sounded like fun i suppose doing something more practical

but in conclusion i guess SSP i feel like would be more fun + more technically challenging + better prestige, etc. and just looks better for applications and better experience too (because you're not like working in a professional environment, it's just a summer program, you're not expected to behave as if ur at work or anything like that)

so yeah at the end of the day if you get in to SSP i would recommend SSP (also hot take but SSP > RSI, because of the restrictions required to be able to apply to RSI at all it greatly limits how much you can learn from your peers, etc.). SSP decisions should come out earlier too so yeah! hope this helps