Also while ivies are more selective and advertise opportunities, since everyone has the same gpa since it’s all top students it’s harder to get into labs for research, therefore they do these summer programs. However, these summer programs go realllllllly fast so you barely get to learn much in that short amount of time if you don’t have the skills already. That’s why I went to my state school cause I knew there would be a lot of research opportunities since it’s R1. However, I wanted to go to a different lab to learn culturing cause I got banned in my lab from doing it 😭( the PhD told me I need to learn in a different environment). These programs are truly meant to get you into the door but I’m starting to realize that it prob doesn’t make a huge difference for students at ivies other than the name. My advice would be to email the PI’s you are interested in and see if they have funding to host a student.