Monetary, intellectual, social value of HS summer experiences

Parent Cafe
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<p>Well, I can use the European teen tour girl as an example of one who absolutely did not try to convince her worried parents to allow her to go. They did the research, and will also provide the money. Same was true for the girl who went on the China trip…conceived of and paid for by her parents.</p>

<p>This is not so for the student going on the Thai community service, who decided herself that this was something she wanted to do.</p>

<p>Perhaps it is the company I keep, who knows, but all these motivated traveling teens that Calmom and others have chronicled do not describe the kids I know, for the most part, doing trips abroad. They are kids whose parents have decided, “oh, wouldn’t this be fun?”, and yes, they are all wealthy people. This is why I queried as to whether these were entitlement trips, rather than trips conceived of, planned, orchestrated and partially funded, by the student him/herself (which to me, also adds growth and value).</p>

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<p>Re- previous posts regarding leadership opportunities
I have a more “liberal” interpretation of teen leadership roles in community service; it doesn’t necessarily entail starting up projects from scratch. In my opinion all of these real life examples from my kids’ friends show initiative and leadership:</p>

<p>Assistant coach for youth sports
Referee/umpire for youth sports
Camp counselor
Using the car given by mom and dad on 16th birthday to do 3 hours per week for Meals on Wheels over the next 3 years
Organizing friends from school/church to work at soup kitchen/Habitat every month/quarter (assume position of “team leader”)
Tutoring at local elementary school
Assisting elementary music students practice their instruments, or…
Giving free lessons to poor students who can’t afford private lessons
Working for 2 years at an animal shelter and being promoted to shift supervisor</p>

<p>Lots of others, but the idea is you can show leadership without starting a giant program on your own. You don’t have to always be a bologna-slapper or go thousands of miles away from home to develop leadership skills.</p>

<p>There’s a lot of generalizations and jumping to conclusions going on in this thread. I hope my opinion is not interpreted as an indictment on someone else’s choices or their children’s “performance” in high school. It’s just that- my opinion. The OP asked for people’s opinions. It is almost painful to see how this thread has turned into an argument.</p>

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<p>I agree completely, doubleplay. This is one of those times when one almost regrets asking the question, as the thread takes on a life of its own. I feel rather misunderstood in this thread, but that’s OK too.</p>

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<p>Allmusic:</p>

<p>But even if it’s the parents who conceive and arrange for the trips, it does not mean that the trips themselves are not highly educational. That does not mean that the traveler has to hit museums in order for the trip to be worthwhile. </p>

<p>Let’s face it, the kids do not construct their own school curriculum. Much of it is pretty much set in stone by their school and/or college requirements. Just because they did not think up a curriculum all by themselves does not mean that they did not learn something in the classes they took. Why should travel abroad be any different?</p>

<p>My kids learn something when we vacation in VT or NH, and they learn ed something when we traveled to Europe. Is “entitlement” solely due to the cost differential?</p>

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<p>

With all due respect, Allmusic, you lumped the Thai trip together with the European tour in your initial post, I responded with a defense of the foreign community service trip, and yet these continue to be lumped together as if they were one and the same. I can’t imagine a kid, rich or poor, who woudn’t leap at the opportunity to go on a European tour, so it would surprise me if these pleasure trips were entirely parent-conceived. </p>

<p>But I’ve been pretty consistent with talking about the community service or other <em>active participation</em> orientated trips (language immersion homestays, research/exploration, etc.) which tend to require substantial commitment from the students. I imagine that there must be some parents, somewhere,pushing those trips on their kids, but I haven’t met them. Speaking as a parent, I have to say that these types of trips scare us to death. You think I like going on the internet deciding on which travel insurance package to cover based on whether it includes coverage for terrorism? There are only a handful of “volunteer” trips that take kids to developed nations - the rest seem to be going to third-world countries, or rural and impoverished areas of the more developed countries. </p>

<p>Why are these two very different types of travel lumped together? Any kid who wants to go on a community service trip is operating on a very different wavelength than the kid whose parents are booking a tour to common tourist destinations. You yourself admit that the kid you know going to Thailand initiated the idea, but then conclude that “for the most part” the kids you described have wealthy parents who decided, “oh, wouldn’t this be fun?”</p>

<p>I think really what is going on is that wealthy parents look for ways to keep their kids busy or entertained over the summer, and because they are rich, they settle on European vacations. Middle class parents also look for ways to keep our kids busy or entertained over the summer, but because we have less money, we are more likely to settle on something like signing up the kids for community college courses.</p>

<p>And kids who go to rural Thailand to perform community service go becasue that’s what they really want to do.</p>

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<p>The title of the thread is more innocuous than the OP. </p>

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<p>God forbid anyone would want to have an interesting experience but I bit the bait. As advocates of travel and global perspectives at any age, calmom, marite, soozievt and I tried to explain to the OP what might be missing from that categorical sneer. </p>

<p>Then, another poster jumped in and (surprisingly) stated that trips abroad were a waste of time and money because as a Harvard alum interviewer, she looked down on them. She also suggested that all Harvard alums and adcom were similarily disapproving. marite confirmed that some Harvard alum and faculty do not hold that view. (Whew!)</p>

<p>The bottom line is that the OP and others disapprove of trips abroad for teenagers. Fair enough. </p>

<p>Those of us who send our kids abroad don’t mind if others don’t approve. When my son had nine months free after graduating in November as a 17 year old, we made a list of 100 things he could do–including jobs in our hometown, jobs in Gramma’s hometown and volunteer experiences. He loves to travel so he chose to live and study and volunteer in countries he might never get a chance to experience otherwise. Our offer. His choice.</p>

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<p>“Then, another poster jumped in and (surprisingly) stated that trips abroad were a waste of time and money because as a Harvard alum interviewer, she looked down on them. She also suggested that all Harvard alums and adcom were similarily disapproving. marite confirmed that some Harvard alum and faculty do not hold that view. (Whew!)”</p>

<p>Please post in complete context where I said the above as I clearly am that Harvard alum interviewer.</p>

<p>Interestingly, I have traveled extensively abroad and in the US with my kids, including in a packaged community service experience. When I was a college prof, I also took students to D.C. and the Dominican Republic in tours that I planned for them.</p>

<p>I have repeatedly said that travel has value. At the same time, I have repeatedly said that the packaged tours and packaged service opportunities are NOT going to open doors at places like Ivies. Certainly students will get into Ivies who have had those kind of experiences. However, unless the student did something extraordinary with their experience – such as work a job to fund their trip – the trips are not what tipped them into a place like an Ivy.</p>

<p>Why? First, having an expensive, parent-funded packaged trip simply indicates that the student comes from a well-off family, and the Ivies and similar schools have an overabundance of affluent applicants. For diversity reasons, what stands out in the top college pool is coming from a low income background, not being among the thousands of applicants coming from 6 figure income households. </p>

<p>Second: The fact that the trips were organized by someone else will not help the student because the top universities are looking for students who have the vision, leadership, creativity and work ethic to start their own service projects. Adcoms know how much work it is to start even a small service project in one’s home town, and how much students will learn from doing such a thing, so that’s why doing something like that will hold more weight in admissions than following along on a project abroad that someone else is leading.</p>

<p>Third: While it’s true that it takes a lot of guts to go abroad particularly with a group of students whom the student has never met before, that is still not a remarkable attribute in an Ivy pool in which the students who stand out the most for independence (in other words, for whom their remarkable independence may have tipped them into an Ivy) may have gone abroad alone on trips that they researched and paid for themselves to countries where they lack friends and family.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, every Harvard applicant whom I interviewed who mentioned having gone abroad on a packaged tour told me that they chose to do this because their parents sent them. Each one of them also described the tour in a cliched way by giving me a travelogue and saying things like the trip taught them “People are people.” </p>

<p>As I’ve already described an abroad experience that I found impressive (The student who loved French and found a way to spend the summer in France working in a resort. He got into his first choice school – Naval Academy – and didn’t apply Ivy, though I think he would have had a good shot), I’ll now describe a CS experience that I think was very impressive:</p>

<p>Despite pessimistic adult administrators who thought it would be impossible, the student got every high school in a district to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. This was the first time that any such project had been done. The student will be going to a state U, but if he had wished to go Ivy, I think he is another example of a person who’d have had a decent chance.</p>

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<p>cheers, the OP prefaced her opinion:</p>

<p>“Some people claim they are doing it “to look good on college applications”. To me, it looks like spoiled kids trying to have interesting experiences.”</p>

<p>Frankly, if people are doing it to look good, it does seem kind of spoiled.</p>

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<p>Some people claim they are doing it “to look good on college applications”. To me, it looks like spoiled kids trying to have interesting experiences.</p>

<p>If they are doing it to look good on college applications, then it’s not a good reason to go. But why is wanting to have interesting experiences a sign of being spoiled, may I ask? Should people only be having boring experiences while wearing hairshirts and going on diets of bread and water?</p>

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<p>

Yeah, that’s why the Ivies are just chock full of Pell grant recipients. </p>

<p>In any case, I don’t think it does an upper middle class kid any good to try to pretend to be poor to fool an Ivy. At least I don’t think anyone is going to buy into the act. The reason poverty ‘stands out’ in the pool is that it’s a rarity; it doesn’t mean anyone’s ever been rejected from an Ivy for being too rich.

Well, this is getting redundant… but if that is true, then to top universities are easily fooled by hype. Anyone who has been involved with real service organizations knows that it is not something that can be done well in one’s spare time while attending school full time taking 9 AP’s, much less also playing first chair in the local youth orchestra, and also being the captain of 3 athletic teams… but this is what the kids seem to be claiming these days. </p>

<p>How much investigation do the Ivies do into these “service projects”? Other than the kid’s spiel, what background checking do you routinely do? Do you even bother to Google names and dates on a regular basis to determine what, if anything, really happened? </p>

<p>If a kid goes and volunteers at the local food bank, the hours can be documented. The existence of the organization and the work it has done historically can be documented. The first thing I do before giving money to a charity is look it up on Guidestar - one convenient aspect of the design-your-own approach is that the project stays conveniently under the radar. Kind of like starting your own high school club and electing yourself president. Looks fine on the college application, but it sure doesn’t fool any of the kid’s classmates at the school.</p>

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<p>"
If a kid goes and volunteers at the local food bank, the hours can be documented. The existence of the organization and the work it has done historically can be documented. The first thing I do before giving money to a charity is look it up on Guidestar "</p>

<p>The example that I gave of a student getting their school district to sponsor and build a Habitat house was well documented in the news</p>

<p>Similarly, other things that students do that are major service projects end up getting some kind of documentation. For instance, my S, who just graduated h.s., got a major award in our community for a project that he did that at the time of the award, he had been doing for about 8 months. The project and the award got media coverage that interested adcoms could find.</p>

<p>Frankly, S’s grades suffered greatly while he pursued his project, and he has no shot at top colleges. However, there are rare students who can do major service projects and maintain high grades, and those are the type of students who the top colleges seek (just like those same colleges seek students who are strong athletes, artists, musicians, leaders, etc. while maintaining high grades).</p>

<p>Few students are going to have the time to start a nonprofit, which takes at least a year, so that’s not the kind of project I’m referring to, though sometimes we see students posting on CCs asking about what kinds of nonprofits they can start in order to impress colleges. And, of course, there are some students who do manage to start nonprofits – and some also do this while maintaining the grades that can them into places like Ivies. </p>

<p>Service projects that demonstrate leadership, creativity, responsibility, etc.<br>
can be things such as Eagle Scout projects. The projects also can be experiences such as organizing a fundraiser for a school club. When students do things like this, their actions will be supported by information provided by their advisor or GC, and in interviews, the students will describe them in detail and with enthusiasm just like people do when describing things that they worked hard at and care about.</p>

<p>Whatever the project, if the student created and organized it, s/he will have had to solve some unexpected challenges, and the student will have learned a lot about the subject, the world and themselves. And it’s very unlikely that the student would sum up this learning and experience with some kind of cliche.</p>

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<p>i haven’t read through these posts, but i have personal experience in answer to the original question. i did a program called LEAPYear, through the organization LEAPNow, which is accredited by New College of California. i paid for the school tuition and then plane flights. my family is close to broke after paying for it, but even my parents agree it was money well spent. during those two semesters of traveling, i learned an immense amount i could have never learned anywhere else. i learned how to be responsible and independent. i learned so much about myself and the world around me. doinh that instead of a normal freshman year of college was probably the best decision of my life. after that i would feel like every student should have the experience of traveling, and maybe not just a fun european vacation, but doing something where you really get into the culture of the places you are visiting. maybe not the easiest option, but the most beneficial.<br>
the program i did certainly isn’t for everyone, but i bet a lot of students out there could gain soooo much from doing something like it. if anyone has any questions about the program, feel free to message me.</p>

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<p>Under intense pressure from my father, I had a job from the age of 10–right through the DQ, movie theatre work. What a gigantic waste of an amazing time of life. It contributed absolutely nothing to my life. For my brohters, the pocket money helped them buy cigarettes, pot and booze.</p>

<p>As far as I am concerned, Americans overvalue teen jobs–by a continental mile. Instead, I sent my kids all over the world. I discouraged any sort of part-time work other than volunteering.</p>

<p>Value? One son was just hired as a ‘finance intern’ for a major presidential campaign in a major city. As soon as he walked in the door, the interviewer looked at him and said, “When can you start?”</p>

<p>Reason? That amazing, diverse CV which shows that he can go anywhere in the world and find success as a sportsman, journalist, researcher, builder, team leader–you name it.</p>

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<p>cheers,
That’s wonderful that you could do that for your kids. There is no way we could afford to give our kids that experience. We put the kids through private school (with some help from the school), which was about the best we could do for them, and it paid off. They had a great education. If we could have, we would have given them the opportunities to travel and study abroad. They weren’t the type of students who would have been eligible for scholarships for that kind of stuff either, whether merit or need-based.</p>

<p>So the next best thing for them, other than going to school, studying, doing ECs, volunteering…was to work part time (in the summer). It gave them some independent learning experiences, some leadership skills, and communication skills. I have to admit, working at the car wash and movie theater didn’t exactly make them worldly (although it was fun getting free tickets to movies while it lasted!).</p>

<p>We had every intention of finding a way for them to study abroad once they got to college…but unfortunately that’s not working out either. Engineering is so structured and has so few abroad learning experiences (for credit, anyway), that either they would end up going to school even longer, or not getting a degree within the 4-5 year plan. </p>

<p>My sons have both worked part time from the time they were sixteen. Currently my oldest is working while in college (tutoring math). He is not doing it to buy pot and cigarettes. That’s not the only reason kids work. I admire students who work, I appreciate that he is contributing to his own expenses (he is in a fraternity- and it has also been a very good experience for him, but expensive).</p>

<p>My comments about ways to show leadership and independence were not meant to minimize the travel abroad experience- who wouldn’t prefer that over working in a car wash? Or umpiring Little League? :eek: I was trying to encourage parents like myself (and their kids) who, when I initially started reading CC posts, felt like the ugly stepsister because my kids weren’t going to CCY, studying abroad, and doing summer long academic programs at places like Johns Hopkins. </p>

<p>Can you adopt me?</p>

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<p>Those summer programs at Johns Hopkins are only 3 weeks, plenty of time to work afterwards. :)</p>

<p>I’m a big believer of immersion in foreign cultures (not quite the same as being a tourist), but realize that not everyone can swing it. Cheers would like my son’s current physics teacher - he’s from Romania and he went on a mini-diatribe about how our kids should be focusing on school instead of having jobs.</p>

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<p>My daughter spent a month in Italy this summer.</p>

<p>The program was not full immersion, but wasn’t a tourist trip either.</p>

<p>Although I guess she enjoyed it okay, she is not eager to go to Europe again anytime soon.</p>

<p>So, for this kid at least, it wasn’t any kind of life changing experience; it doesn’t appear to have been any more beneficial than a number of other things she could have done.</p>

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<p>My D, who is a freshman in college, has never done anything in the summer throughout high school. Grades 9-11 she went to a year-round school. After HS graduation, there wasn’t enough time for her to have a job, and there wasn’t a camp she was interested in that fit her short summer. I feel bad that she never had any of those experiences. She did take a 2 week trip to Germany that she paid for herself (with graduation gift money) - it was her first trip ever away from home alone. I think it gave her confidence in herself for college. She wrote us a note and left it on her bed - I found it after she left. She told us how excited she was, but how nervous because she’d never done anything like this before.</p>

<p>Someone in the original portion of this thread mentioned that every kid is different and ready for (or needing) different experiences. My D had quite a bit of travel experience already, and probably has more “cross-cultural competency” that the average teenager, but had way below normal levels of self-reliance. </p>

<p>With each of our kids, we chose/allowed different summer experiences based on who they were, and what we felt would help them the most in terms of becoming who they wanted to be. For our oldest, that involved summer jobs, some travel, and GHP. Our second had a few music camps, but mostly was left alone to pursue his passions. As I said, our D did not have the opportunity; we are in the process of considering summer programs for her in college since she didn’t get the experience in HS. However, she has also never held a job (aside from teaching a violin student), and at some point we’re thinking that will also be a necessary part of her growth.</p>

<p>It’s like putting a puzzle together. Can’t force one kid’s pieces to fit with another’s overall picture.</p>

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<p>I used to panic when I’d hear my friends in the Northeast regale me with the most marvelous enrichment experiences. We could afford it, sure, but frankly I doubt my son (in particular, daughter not sure) would want to participate/cooperate. He’s a freshman in high school now, and we’ve decided to let him follow his passion for a particular sport and work with underprivileged kids doing it. He’ll get service hours for it and I think he’ll be good at it. He’s not finding a cure for cancer but its what he loves, and maybe he can help someone along the way. If a college turns up their nose at it, so be it. He can’t be something he isn’t.</p>

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<p>Interesting post from Cheers about his upbringing and how he’s done it with his kids. I find that my friends who grew up in privilege and travelled extensively, etc. growing up DON’T want that for their kids. Their kids are bagging groceries, waiting tables,etc. in summers. My friends who grew up doing that (waiting tables, etc. ) are much more interested in having their kids enjoy what they didn’t get to do growing up. The grass is always greener I guess.I do question how kids can learn the value of a dollar if they’re never required to earn one.</p>

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<p>I had the opportunities to send both s & d on foriegn travel excursions.</p>

<p>Based on our financial situation, taking advantages of the specific program was the only viable option that we had that allowed our kids to experience a European trip (s&d) and an Australian trip (d).</p>

<p>My son was slated to do a youth orchestra trip to Europe, but it was cancelled because of 9/11; that opportunity was lost.</p>

<p>We did not do this as a means to pad an application or boost admissions prospects. </p>

<p>Our feeling was that it was important for them to have these experiences in terms of culture, exposure to different societies, and helping them realize a sense of being part of a global as opposed to national community.</p>

<p>Both my wife and I have no travel experiences outside of this continent, and we felt it important our kids did before they entered college.</p>