Helen Carey on this summer’s US Programme.

For two weeks this summer, 150 state school students experienced life as an undergraduate at some of America’s top universities in the second year of the Sutton Trust’s US Programme, run in partnership with the US-UK Fulbright Commission: 100 students went to Yale University and 50 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Last year, 21 of the 64 participants on the pilot won places and funding/scholarships to leading Stateside universities and accessed $4.5m of financial aid.

This year’s students not only visited and stayed at their host campus, they also toured other colleges in the area, including Barnard, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Smith College and Wellesley College.

They were treated to in-depth tours by current undergraduates who gave an insight into university life, and top admissions staff gave them advice on how to apply to their institutions and information on financial aid.

The centre point for both weeks was a college fair arranged specifically for the Sutton Trust US Programme. Over 20 top US institutions made the Sunday trip to Harvard to meet our students, including Bowdoin College, Dartmouth College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania and the University to Richmond to name a few.

Students also found time to enjoy a few of the tourist highlights the east coast of the US has to offer, including taking in a Boston Red Sox baseball game, a Boston Duck Tour, a visit to the Empire State Building, tea at the British Consulate in Boston, a reception at the Yale Club in New York and lunch in Central Park.