ASDRP - Aspiring Scholars Directed Research Program - Fremont, California

Ray Chin

My daughter attended here for two and a half years, now my younger one is too. Big time commitment, but she learned a lot and we are very happy with how ASDRP has been part of her and our journey over high school years. Advisors are typically doctoral-level scientists and most are very serious about science. Students should attend their events to get the most out of the experience.

Ron Cam

My student had a great experience spending three years at ASDRP, big time commitment and challenging but he learned a lot. He spent a lot of time every week on project, his mentor was very persistent on everybody learning how to do materials engineering the proper way, and learning how to use instruments. Coming from physics/engineering background myself, I am very impressed with expertise of faculty, and persistence in having students learning to be independent.

Nrupali Sahani

If there were an option to give a 0 star, I would have given that. It was a horrible experience. No one is taking ownership of what is going on. It is a total waste of time for kids and money for parents. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. We wasted thousands of dollars hoping the conditions would improve if the mentor were changed, but no luck. A few groups were doing stuff, so if you are lucky, you are fortunate. If we are paying money, somebody should take accountability. Those kids coming to the lab for extended years do not allow the newcomers to do things.

Karthik J

Being at ASDRP is probably one of the most impactful factors in my son’s choice of college majors. When we first started I was little skeptical, but what became apparent very quickly is that these folks are serious about science and about training kids to be young adults. My son made lots of friends here from different school. Thank you to the team for making it a great learning experience for all of us.

bob joe

Extremely bad program! The mentors barely helped, self guided and didn't move anywhere. Overall horrible experience. Never sign up for this.

Cary X

Our experience was great. Coming from a biotech background myself, it is a special place to see scientist coming together to train my child. The research capabilities are well organized and I appreciate the emphasis on training kids in real research. It was a good learning experience for me as much as it is for my student.

Simmy Ka

ASDRP was a great experience in my high school time. I recently graduated (now stem major) and I learned a lot while I was at ASDRP. Sure, nothing is perfect, but the faculty are very passionate about their fields and about showing students the ins and outs of research. On top of running experiments in lab, I learned how to operate instruments i didn't know existed.

Research at ASDRP was challenging, but also quite rewarding and I learned how to do science and ended up writing a paper at the end.

Sam Miller

Only a few groups are good, especially related to life sciences and chemistry. Computer Science department is hyped, the chair does not no what the groups are up to and some "advisors" don't show up for weekly meetings. My researcher spent almost one semester just to come up with a topic and then the researcher used to meet for 20 mins a week with barely any guidance. $975 * 8 = $7800 for the whole group with no outcome, no use of facility, no learning and waste of time. Ultimately the group was abandoned.
Many advisors are not current on research topics and rely on senior students as leads to make progress on the topic. The progress of the whole group is dependent on the availability of the leads. Many a times the leads are busy with college applications, exams, etc and cannot attend hence the whole group is blocked because there is no documentation about the research, advisors don't have full knowledge about the research topic, etc.
This organization receives ~$200,000 to ~$300,000 a semester in fees with probably very few researchers benefiting from it.

AFA admissions are concerned their bar is low and many researchers are there because their parents have pushed them. These researchers are just coasting and don't contribute to the group putting a lot of load on responsible researchers. Such researchers stall the progress of the whole group.

My advice, look for better organizations who can provide better guidance for your budding researchers and have better screening criteria to admit researchers.