By “memorable” I mean fond memories that light up your face 5, 10, or even 40 years later. Such memories are priceless but do not necessarily cost much. Why I ask? To put a smile on your face first. And second, I have a boy with 5 summers before the year of college and I hope his are as memorable as yours if doable.
It saddens me that kids this age have to work extremely hard on academics in the summer to stay competitive for college. I believe it’s unnecessary and am happy that I don’t live in a place where we need to do that. I seriously doubt the extra academics make much difference in the long run. Memorable summers may not only warm your heart and sweeten your day for years to come, but they may be a better preparation for college and life behind.
I don’t think they have to work extememly hard to be competitive…it is good to do something productive like go to camp, work, or even a summer academic program if they want.
Who says they do? My kids didn’t, and they were both accepted at their first choice colleges. They’re both independent adults now, with graduate degrees and actual decent-paying jobs, and neither of them is living in our basement. So I don’t think they lost out on anything by not pushing academics in the summer.
And we live in one of those places where some people push their kids so hard that I worry that they will fall over the edge.
Other than the required homework for some AP classes (which given you have an entire summer to do it, wasn’t that much), my kids never did anything academic during the summer. They spent their time having fun with family and friends as well as volunteer work. We also always took about a 2 week family vacation.
The lack of academics during the summer did keep them from being accepted to competitive colleges.
My kids went to overnight camp for 7 years each and that was great. My younger daughter also got to take a fun " teen tour" of Europe. But it was an academic program that she is eternally greatful for. She did a pre-nursing program at Adelphi University. This program allowed her to decide that nursing was indeed for her and helped ENORMOUSLY. With all those “Why Nursing” essays she had to write. This helped her get into every program she applied to because it also satisfied the required " demonstrated interest" of many programs including hers at the University of Michigan.
My kids each went to New England Music Camp in Maine for three summers. It was a fabulous camp…a blend of serious music, and fun camp things as well. They met fiends there they still keep in touch with. Our summer vacations for six Summer’s were attending concerts, parents weekends and the like.
We live in a very academically competitive town and I always felt they were burnt out on academics by the summer. My kids went to a fun camp and when they were older my S worked at a camp and my D interned at a non-for-profit that she was very involved with and passionate about. They just needed to decompress. And yes, they both got into college!!
We couldn’t afford many family trips but I have fond memories of the ones we did take (NYC twice, LA once) and of sleeping late, no homework, and more time for recreational reading and TV.
The absolute best summer my son had was when he went to the UMD Young Scholars program- 3 weeks at UMD where they took one interesting course of their choice and explored DC in-depth.
The best part about it was he met the greatest kids that he bonded with and developed strong friendships that have lasted over 3 years now even though they are spread across the country. They all meet up several times a year at a beach house for a long weekend or a week.
Hands down that was his favorite summer he has said! Don’t let the threat of summer academics keep you from the chance to bond with other great students!
Our kids just chill, travel, hang out with friends/family and focus on their hobbies. Most teens in our area do standardized prep, math classes or paid Ivy summers so my kids really feel grateful that we don’t dictate how they should spend their summers.
“It saddens me that kids this age have to work extremely hard on academics in the summer to stay competitive for college.” It might be easy to get that impression from this site, but it’s not true.
My college kid took courses one summer because she wanted an academic sleepaway experience, and 2 weeks of driver’s ed one summer because it was easier to schedule then. She also did some SAT prep from a book over two of the summers, rarely more than an hour a day and sometimes not at all. You may consider that “working extremely hard”. I don’t.
Luckily that’s just not true. My oldest spent 3 weeks doing fast paced High school chemistry the summer after freshman year and a similar amount of time doing Computer Graphics via Game Programming the summer after sophomore year. (The latter was 100% fun for him.) He didn’t do academics any other summer. He got into Harvard, Carnegie Mellon (SCS) and other fine schools.
Younger son went to music camp after freshman year and did nothing academic after that. He got into schools like U of Chicago, Vassar, Tufts.
Neither spent any significant amount of time practicing for the SATs either.
As for the OP’s question. We have some very nice memories of summers spent hiking in Vermont and kayaking on Cape Cod. Not to mention playing board games. None of which appeared on any college application.
My younger son spent one summer meeting regularly with his high school friends to cook dinners. He became Mr. Dessert and still makes a mean apple pie.
You are lucky you don’t live where @TheGFG lives. Her place sounds terrible and it seems no kid can escape the race (to where?). Hopefully most places are like what @mathyone and @mathmom described. By the way, I don’t like the idea to cut summer break short.
@runswimyoga That sounds great, but I thought it’s one of the things to avoid. Is your son in high school or college now?
@WorryHurry411, I was going to ask how TheGFG’s school does. Hers is probably like yours. Why the kids/their parents still do that is beyond me.
That’s the kind of memories I had in mind. I wasn’t thinking of any thing to put on the application, but things to keep in the memories happy. @thumper1 kids’ music summer sounds fun too.
Picking Ollalaberries for pie., going to the beach and seeing seals frolic next to surfers. Watching Humpback whales jumping out of the water and making old fashioned hand cranked ice cream ! Eating juicy tree ripened nectarines over the kitchen sink.
My son did zero academic work over the summer. From age 6-15 he was at sleep-away camp for 7 weeks. My son loved camp and remains close to his camp friends to this day. It was very expensive to send him so we didn’t do any summer family vacation after he came home.
he didn’t use the summer program at UMD for his resume at all … he just enjoys being challenged- his mind is always inquisitive wanting to learn new things… I think he took a course on cryptology called computer science w/o the computer ? it was something that just sounded intreguing to him -he didn’t have a computer science background or anything - the teacher was incredible and he loved everything about that experience… but mostly it was the other kids…
IDK, he had done American Music Abroad trips and summer music camps but this particular group of kids he met just clicked … The program was the least expensive of the academic college experience camps we could find… I would highly recommend it in a heartbeat…
Best of Luck to your son! My other son does swim team and beach patrol in the summer and loves that… not necessarily memorable but maybe someday it will be to him?!
Before my oldest went to college, we took a family trip to Germany. We used miles for four of the five tickets and our London hotel. My wife’s brother is working near Frankfurt so we stayed with his family and did some touristy stuff. I bought my daughter her first legal beer at the Hofbrau Haus (and later drank it myself, not her thing). We also stopped in London for four days on the way home. This summer I went with the younger two for a week of climbing at Smith Rock, along with some fly fishing, swimming, and just hanging out.
From my childhood, my father worked at a university so we had a lot of family time during the summers. I think my favorite was driving across the country with dad and my younger brother with golf clubs and a canvas tent in the trunk and bicycles on a rack. Ten weeks gives you time to meander.
I tried to have my kid do things in the summer that she wasn’t able to do (or that I was not able to do) during the school. So, for her, this meant a fly fishing camp, a culinary camp, an outdoor survival camp, a junior medical camp where she did a ton of dissections, and tennis camps. She read a lot during the summer, hung out with her brother, and we took some driveable vacations. She did other academic camps, but not to help her get into college – these were ones she had won scholarships to, and she found the subject matter interesting. Summer was not used for test prep. Summer = only academic if she wanted it to be academic, and driven by her. She also worked a bit in the summers when she was older.
