Summer Activities To Avoid

Summer activities are a part of your overall extracurricular experience in high school. On college applications in the United States, you will have to fill out a list of your activities which will include both school year and summer activities. As you are making summer plans, keep your future application activities list in mind. Participating in summer experiences not only can be very rewarding to you personally but also, can make you a more interesting applicant. You will have a more in-depth activities list and you will have more to say in your college applications. Also, you have more time on your hands during the summer, so you can plan activities that you normally are not able to do during the school year. Colleges appreciate consistency and depth in extracurricular activities, so think about ways you can take existing activities and participate in them in new and more comprehensive ways.
Avoid experiences that are a one-time opportunity.
Activities such as leadership conferences that last one-week typically carry little to no weight in the admissions process. Many of these leadership conferences are expensive and are focused on a particular career theme. Consider finding a job shadow or internship locally in a field that you want to learn more about. This shows your personal initiative and utilization of your local community.
Group travel experiences, such as trips abroad, that are a one-time experience are often seen in the same way as leadership conferences. Colleges want to see depth, consistency, and contribution. These trips provide a small service experience with no or little opportunities for consistency and depth. If you participate in an experience like this, consider bringing the experience back to your community by creating fundraisers or making more trips back to the same place to do even more service work.
Summer pre-college programs offer you the opportunity to take college-level classes. These programs reflect the same perspective of summer leadership and group travel experiences. They are typically viewed as opportunities that lack depth and consistency. If you are building your exposure to a particular academic interest, then attending a pre-college program within that specific area can help to show direct experience within that college major and this can help to enhance your application.
It is important to start planning out your summer experiences over the winter, so you have time to meet deadlines and plan out what you want to do.
Families from the USA and All Over The World – Schedule your free introductory parent phone call or online video meeting now! - Schedule Here
Location: Colorado, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AI has arrived to college admissions. What does it mean for students?

Image
  Much like every other sector of life, the rapid development of AI will undoubtedly shape the future of college admissions. What you may not know is that AI is already at play in the admissions review process. So how should students approach essays and applications in light of the growing role of AI? The answers are probably not what you’d expect – AI has already arrived to the admissions review process. In a survey cited by Inside Higher Ed, 50% of college admissions respondents said AI was already in use in their admissions review process. The catch? Those responses were collected in 2023 . In the two years since then the capabilities and accessibility of AI tools have grown exponentially, so it is safe to assume that at this point admissions offices that are not deploying AI in their review process are in the extreme minority. If we can be almost certain that some components of your application will be screened with the use of AI, how does that change the ways students should ...
Read more

When the time comes, how do you choose a college?

Image
 With the May 1st national deposit day in sight, the tables turn for students and families who’ve spent months anxiously awaiting college decisions, and it’s time to decide what’s right for you . While you may be compelled to check the rankings, we have a different approach. Here’s how we encourage you to make your own best decision – #1 Break up with the rankings: There are all kinds of college rankings and ‘best of’ lists out there…and while that may have led you to apply to a certain school, we encourage you to leave all those external validations behind when it comes time to make your college decision. The truth is, no ranking list can tell you if you will be happy, if you will build a great community, meet amazing mentors, or shape the life you want to. Nothing can tell you this with certainty, but decision time is the perfect time to step away from the noise of what everyone else thinks about a college and tap into your own intuition. Here’s how: #2 Ask yourself: how will I m...
Read more

Testing, testing: What to know about the role of the SAT & ACT in 2025 & beyond

Image
 With spring exams upon us, many students & parents wonder – how important is testing really in the college admissions process? While the pendulum swung to a fully test optional landscape just a few years ago, a slow swing back to testing has been underway, especially at the most intensely selective colleges. Here’s what to know to make your own best decisions about testing as you go forward – Where have we been, where are we headed? For those who are keeping track, the landscape at the most selective colleges has swung back in favor of requiring test scores as one component of a complete application. Among the group of 12 colleges known as the “Ivy Plus” Schools which include the eight Ivies plus Stanford, Duke, MIT, and University of Chicago, only four have retained test optional policies as of early 2025. Those are Princeton, Columbia, Duke and University of Chicago. While these schools get much of the attention, the reality is there are over 2100 colleges in the US that co...
Read more