As others have said, it depends on the kid. My son was educated overseas and so, to give him a general idea what a US college is, we sent him to a couple of university sports camps his freshman and sophomore summers. No academic focus at all, but he stayed in the dorms, ate in the dining halls, wandered around the campuses, etc. I think it was helpful in a backwards sort of way. The schools he spent time at were all big - Cornell, UC Berkeley and UCLA - and when he started thinking about colleges his junior year, he realized he preferred Cornell’s rural atmosphere but generally wanted a much smaller school. That really helped us narrow down his focus to LACs.
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