I never understood how geeks who claim to value freedom and civil liberties could also go back to CTY year after year. As someone who actually did the summer math program (once), CTY is a lot like living in a fascist country, but without the good food.
I did a 5 week summer academic program at Penn State the summer before my senior year of high school. The rules were fascist (no touching people of the opposite sex) but we managed to get around all the rules, the RAs were cool, and living in such an intense closed social group was so much fun that it was all worth it.
