<p>actually coldcomfort- sinc emost people live in cities or the suburbs- rural students add a valued diversity and perspective to the school
you can get sophisticated pretty quick if that is what you want-but rural life has an selfsufficency, that the life of a city dweller lacks</p>
<p>What about a child who is going abroad on a language intensive summer study and staying with a host family - not to boost her resume, but because her school only allows 6 class periods and she loves languages and wants to learn another.
It’s also not your typical western European language.</p>
<p>I’m not asking if it would help a resume - that’s not the point, but from what some of you are saying - would it be detrimental?</p>
<p>Georgiamom: That’s a good one. Your daughter is pursuing a passion for language and going beyond her high school curriculum to challenge herself. Adcoms like that. She can use her experiences to craft a personal statement or essay. The trip that would be considered dubious is more along the lines of a multi-city tour of Europe for fun with a group of kids just like yourself.</p>
<p>I still don’t get why it matters to “impress” the adcoms or not. Should a kid NOT go on a travel tour because it doesn’t impress the adcoms? Frankly, my kid could care less. She went because she wanted to travel and see these places over an extended period of time with other youth. Like another mom said, it was a good experience in itself with a group of kids from all over whom she did not know ahead of time. One of her trips involved camping as well. She didn’t write her essays about these trips at all. She did include them on her activity resume which was annotated. </p>
<p>As far as work, I agree that is a very valuable activity. Indeed, my child who has gone on two teen tours also had worked for two years as a server in a restaurant at a country inn. She also had been a youth soccer coach and also was paid to teach dance. So work experience she had. Her summers were spent doing what interested her, simply put. They were never done to impress and we doubt they did impress. I surely don’t think the activities were held AGAINST her. She got into almost all the colleges on her list and attends an Ivy (though that was never her goal but giving some perspective here). With Princeton, she was waitlisted so while that is not the same as an admit, she was considered and their waitlist was not big that year…apparently a couple hundred. I doubt her summer experiences at performing arts camps, a teen tour of the US, a tennis tour of Europe and an internship with an architect HURT her application. The tennis tour ties in with her playing Varsity tennis. Performing arts camp tied in with her very commited ECs for years to the performing arts. Touring out west with a strange group of kids had its own merits of tying in with her travel interests. An internship tied in with her exploration of her intended field of study. I surely do not believe that summer experiences MUST be intellectual at all. I think doing worthwhile activities out of interest and in some cases that tie in with longer term interests, are fine. I also think work experience is fine. The only instances that I think are less favorable are ones where teens hung out all summer with nothing of substance. WHAT the activities are…is not as important as interest and commitment. I would not search for the “right” activities. I would not be interested in “impressing adcoms”. I would do what is of interest and put one’s all into it. It need not be fodder for the app essay, though in some cases, may be.</p>
<p>By the way, my kids spent nine summers away from home and while this wasn’t the objective, I do think that their transition to college was enabled by the fact that they had lived away from home and been in many situations with other youth whom they did not know. That was not so new when they went to college.</p>
<p>My daughter went to some music programs- St. Olaf and then Tanglewood before senior year. We took family vacations to Colorado. Since she went to boarding school (Interlochen) junior and senior year, we wanted her around in the summer!
WildChild went to some running camps after freshman year, was in a non-voluntary wilderness program after sophomore year, and spent a month after junior year living on his own in the NM mountains running and reading. He wrote one of his essays about one of his morning runs up to the top of a mountain. He went on some family trips to Colorado a couple of summers.</p>
<p>Hi Coldcomfort,</p>
<p>You wrote:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sweetie, don’t sell your self short. This says volumes about who your are, your values, pulling together to work for the greater good, your sense of commitment, being responsible caring and showing genuine concern for others and appreciate the joy there is in the everyday moments like reading and watching tv. This is the stuff that many of us take for granted. All which are truly great traits to have and will take you far in life. </p>
<p>While you may not see this as being fun and you would have rather been doing something else, you stayed the course and all of these schools saw how really special you are and said welcome to the class of 2010. In a little while you be doing other great things and will reflect fondly upon those times where you were sitting by the road “doing nothing”.</p>
<p>Enjoy your last summer of high school.</p>
<p>Coldcomfort:</p>
<p>I agree with Sybbie. You sound very impressive.
And I am absolutely certain that your presence will be educational to all these urbanites flocking to top colleges who don’t know a zucchini from a cucumber or one end of a cow from another. Where I live, going to a farm is a field trip!</p>
<p>“Northstarmom, what you wrote is so nice, but I am unworthy of what you have written. I really don’t like working the farm stand and if it weren’t that it is an important part of my family’s income, I would be doing something, anything, else.”</p>
<p>That’s exactly the point. You did what was necessary, and presumably, you did it well and responsibly. You could have whined and complained and figured out a way to avoid helping your family (an example would be if you were so sullen or passive-aggressive that your family let you do something else, and with your obvious brains, you probably could have found something else to do such as possibly getting to go to a free academic program or something similar. You could have claimed to your family that you needed to do something like that to get to college, and your family very well may have believed you even though your actions economically would have hurt them.)</p>
<p>When I was a high school senior and a rising senior in h.s., I worked as a cashier, helped someone clean her house, babysat, and worked as a file clerk – all to earn $ for college because even though my dad was a dentist, he was so financially irresponsible, that I knew that I had to work to earn $ for college.</p>
<p>My friends in my upper middle class town were doing things over the summer like going on out of state sailing trips (I had to turn down an invitation because of work), relaxing, and doing fun, interesting volunteer work.</p>
<p>Believe me, I would much rather have done what my friends were doing. What I was doing was tedious and boring. </p>
<p>Anyway, I was accepted to Harvard, Cornell and Brown among other places. At Harvard’s freshman orientation, frankly, I felt embarassed that when people talked about their summer trips, research and other fun, interesting experiences, all I could say was that I worked 60 hours a week (store clerk in the evening, file clerk in a noisy factory in the daytime). I even wondered if Harvard made a mistake in accepting me. </p>
<p>However, looking back, I can see that what made me stand out was my obvious willingness to do whatever it took to meet my academic goals. That can be far more impressive than someone who has had parent-paid travel or other opportunities that they could only accept because they were fortunate enough not to have to do boring or hard work to help their families or earn $ for college.</p>
<p>So, hats off to you , and best wishes for a nice college experience. Trust me, you have lots to feel good about, and the adcoms knew what they were doing in admitting you.</p>
<p>" Should a kid NOT go on a travel tour because it doesn’t impress the adcoms? “”</p>
<p>No one has said that. What some of us, including me, have said is that choosing summer activities to impress colleges is a big mistake. Many of those pricey student travel tours and summer academic experiences indicate subtly or obviously that participantion will impress colleges – and that’s why many parents will pay big bucks for their kids to have such experiences.</p>
<p>If the kids really want such experiences, and the parents can afford them, fine. It is a mistake, though when families send kids to such things in hopes of impressing colleges. It’s particularly sad when parents who think colleges will be impressed bust their family budgets to provide disinterested kids with such experiences.</p>
<p>I’ve even seen parents who have never gone abroad – and who want to go abroad themselves – sacrificing to send their kids on an expensive tour because the parents think that will help the kid’s college chances. Meanwhile, the parents could have used the same amount of money to take the whole family abroad. Such a trip probably still wouldn’t boost the kid’s college acceptance chances, but at least the whole family would have a nice vacation.</p>
<p>I’ve even seen parents who have never gone abroad – and who want to go abroad themselves – sacrificing to send their kids on an expensive tour because the parents think that will help the kid’s college chances.
I don’t disagree
I would love to travel more- and I have sent both my kids on journeys to places I have never gone- I had a couple considerations
THe trips were with their schools- and it was part of the experience to do it with their classmates
THis also made it cheaper- not because they had bargain rates- because that was actually more expensive since the students covered the costs of the teachers going- but because they had fundraisers and scholarships.
I actually had to encourage the older one to take the trip junior year- but her private school, had, had things like that all along & she hadn’t ever gone on any of the big trips- partially personality- but also partially I suspect because she was concerned about money.
She really had a good time ( even if most of the pictures were of her friends on the plane?)
and I am glad we had her go.
WHen her senior class took their traditional trip backpacking through Canyonlands- there wasn’t even any question that she would go.
They might have even had the entire senior class go- that was the objective. ( of coruse it was only 18 kids!)</p>
<p>emeraldk,</p>
<p>I understand how you made the decision to send your kids abroad with their school classes despite your own desires to go, and what you did seems like a very loving thing. I bet your kids have some nice memories.</p>
<p>My S went on a trip to El Salvador as a high school sophomore as part of a small group. He’d been taking Spanish and in preparation for the trip, he learned a great deal about the country and about the particular area the group was going to. He came back full of what he’d learned there and incredibly proud of himself that he’d managed some basic conversation with local kids. It was probably the highlight of his high school career. Between paying for his costs and subsidizing another kid, it was not cheap, but it was worth every penny to us.</p>
<p>The thing is, what I find so often on this forum is a way of thinking in many communities that I understand is prevalent but is VERY much not the case in my neck of the woods. Doing things to get into college (other than doing well in school) is not a way of operating amongst my children or their local peers. Many here work in summers. My kids worked the summer prior to college and one of my kids worked part time during school. But my kids did have the opportunity to go away in summers to camps or programs that were enriching to their interest areas. They didn’t do it to impress colleges. I would hope that such activities were not frowned upon by colleges, even though there is nothing impressive about what they did. I understand the point that SOME parents pick such programs with the notion that it might help with college admissions but all I can say is that not all children or parents opt for participation with college in mind. They simply are interested in the activities themselves and would do them even if they never planned on attending college. I went to overnight camp for TEN summers for 8 weeks every summer and it had nothing to do with college but are some of the fondest memories I have of growing up. Not all can afford to do these things but for those who can, it is not so terrible to do so. My kids, nor I, went to private schools. Summers were for fun to explore areas of interest/enrichment, though in my kids’ cases, were not academic in nature (though some kids are interested in academics in summer). For one of my kids, her 8 years at theater camp were a major significant influence on her life and who she is today in so many capacities that I can’t begin to tell you. </p>
<p>For my children, the option to travel abroad as a family was not there. My husband could never take that quantity of time off. We did try to take one week vacations as a family per year. The experiences my older D had seeing our wondeful country and also seeing other countries, she could not have had without the teen tours, plus the experience with other teens from all over whom she did not know ahead of time, was of value…the independence is not the same as a family vacation though I very much value family vacations. We tried hard to fit in one week as a family too. </p>
<p>I would never dream that an expensive teen tour would help my child’s c hances to get into college but could care less. She went because she was dying to travel and see these places and one of her trips combined with tennis competitions, a big interest of hers. My D loves travel so much that she has opted to get a job in France this summer just so she can go back and spend more time there this time and is also studying abroad in the fall in Italy. When I was 17, I went on a teen tour of Europe too and frankly, that was the ONLY time I have ever been out of the Western Hemisphere and I can’t afford to go now and so I am grateful that I had that one basic tour anyway. </p>
<p>I’m also glad that my D has held various jobs. These jobs have built a work resume that actually helped her in securing a job in France for the summer and she had related work recommendations. </p>
<p>My children’s college summer experiences are either funded by their own earnings or else they are earning money. Still, I am glad that earlier they did have summers where they were engaged in programs away from home to delve into the areas they love that were not academics. Those experiences were invaluable to them as people and mattered not in terms of whether an adcom might be “impressed.” They’d pick these things all over again if they had to. </p>
<p>And in the end, while none of their EC endeavors or summer experiences were chosen with college in mind…they still had successful college admissions outcomes. Their interests are clear and they’ve chosen to do what they’ve done because they wanted very much to do these things and are quite enthusiastic about their devotion to these interest areas and these experiences that they had growing up. I also think that the “away” programs enhanced their independence and has contributed to their ease of starting new programs…be it college or new summer endeavors…far from home where they knew nobody ahead of time. One of my kids will fly to France later this week by herself and make her way and doesn’t know a soul. My other kid (who is just 17) was dropped off in another state yesterday for the summer at a job and is living in a house where she also didn’t know a soul and they adjust so readily and are fearless about these situations. It may just be their personalities but I have to wonder if all their years since age 8 of going away to camps/etc. formed a basis for their independence and ease at new things and transitions to living away from home in strange places.</p>
<p>Marite and EmeraldKity…my kids also went on big school trips. One went to France and also to Quebec City with the French Club. The other went to Italy and Greece. While I wish I could do these things too, it gives me such great pleasure to see my kids have these experiences which were invaluable and are different than a family trip as well. We have gone on family trips though not on the other side of the world or for that length of time. I also think these trip experiences with other youth are an experience in themselves that are just a different sort of thing but teens value it a lot. Making their way in a foreign city and all is different than mom and dad taking them.</p>
<p>NSM actually only older D actually went * abroad* she went to Costa RIca-
but since she had been taking Spanish for about 5 years and since they were doing some ecological work while they were there- it seemed like a shame to have her miss out</p>
<p>Younger D with her public school went to Hawaii ( camping in Lahania- part of a Marine biology trip- which was nice- since in her MArine science class this year- who got to go was a lottery & she didnt get picked)
She really loved it- and I knew the parents who went fairly well and so was pretty comfortable with her going ( I would have loved togo- but they only needed so many parents & it was hard for her to switch gears to have me along)
Also in 8th gd- her class went on a NYC- DC trip at the end of the year-mostly historical- but they also did some things like see a Broadway show and ride bikes in Central park </p>
<p>I did get to spend a week with her 8th gd class at a YMCA camp in the San JUans- of course most of the time if I saw her- I jsut pretended I didn’t recognize her!- I was pretty busy with my crew anyway & the other parents would get to tell me things she had done when I wasn’t there. </p>
<p>I think one reason why our whole family hasn’t gone a lot of places is our schedules- as well as money- also because there are so many places we want to go it is hard to decide! ( but frankly living in the northwest- the summers are so pretty- its hard to think about going any place else- in the winter though- some day I am just taking what I can fit into a carryone and hitting the road)</p>
<p>I am keeping in mind that many kids seem to do a semester overseas- I have one friend with a child in Paris and one who will be in New Zealand- she just had knee surgery, but she is doing really well with her PT so she can go ;)</p>
<p>coldcomfort, your family will soon have to compete against all the new farm produce stands that will be opened by parents trying to get their kids into Princeton!</p>
<p>Good one, NJres. Not to mention the businesses that will spring up designing a unique summer experience around working at a farm produce stand. Perhaps in a foreign country as well.</p>
<p>I agree that kids should spend their summers as they wish without worrying about how it will look on a college application.</p>
<p>That is why it concerns me when Northstarmom posts her impressions of how she assesses the way students spend their summers.</p>
<p>I can see how someone would read this and then become concerned about their kid taking a summer trip abroad or whatever because it will “look bad” on an application.</p>
<p>I agree. We have friends who spent their summers visiting relatives in Asia or Latin America. When S1 was younger, I sent him to my brother in France for two summers. He had a wonderful time going on vacation in the Alps and the Pyrenees. His French became marginally better, but that was not the purpose. Getting to know his cousins better was. And a much better goal than looking good to adcoms. Not that it mattered anyway, as he got into his top choice of colleges.</p>
<p>I just read through this thread and my impression is that northstarmom is making some helpful comments, especially since she interviews potential applicants for Harvard. She ought to know what impresses the people making the selections. I didn’t get the impression she was criticizing people who spend their summers on trips; instead making the point that people who think that will give them a leg up in the selection process are misguided, which is probably true. Not everyone takes trips for their resumes, but some do. I have personally spoken to parents who admit to enrolling their uninterested teens in summer programs for that very reason. And my sons have friends who admit to doing things just for their resume. It’s a sad state of affairs. There’s a multi-million dollar industry out there preying on parents fears that their kids won’t have an impressive community service or leadership resume, so they offer camps and trips costing thousands of dollars, packaging them as if the teen has somehow been selected personally to receive this or that opportunity.</p>