Monetary, intellectual, social value of HS summer experiences

Northstarmom · June 24, 2006, 10:08pm

<<If you were a student and told me that story, my question would be: “What did you do then?” “How did you filll the time?”

I wouldn’t care about whether you got any real community service done, but I wouldn’t think too highly of a student who complained about “doing absolutely nothing” and of the whole thing being a waste of time.">>

The subject probably wouldn’t come up in an interview because I’ve done many other things including community service in which I learned much more and had a great community impact. This included in places in the U.S. in which I was a newcomer or was working with people from cultures different from mine.

Here’s what happened in my Caribbean service experience: The community thought that my husband, sons (ages 11, 15) were CIA agents (I kid you not), and most people wouldn’t speak to us. The children called my kids “white boys,” something that the kids hissed at my sons. When my family was around, the people spoke in patois, which we couldn’t understand. This was a country in which everyone speaks English, so our exclusion from their conversations was deliberate.

We are African American – and clearly African American. In fact, my father was from the country that we were visiting. I spoke to people who in general, didn’t speak to me. An exception was a group of elderly ladies who did reply to me, and then asked if I had brought them any eyeglasses. When I responded that I had not, they complained and then walked away.

Every day, we got up and asked what we would be doing and the leader of our group of about 6 Americans from all over the U.S. checked with the village leader who told us virtually every day that there was nothing to do.

We did get to “volunteer” in the village’s school. Apparently, it was near the end of the school year, and basically the teachers were looking for an excuse to leave the classroom during a time of the year in which the kids were allowed to run wild. In the classroom in which I was, the teacher gave me a book to “teach,” and then walked out. The kids then ran around screaming and started throwing chunks of ice at students who we walking outside. (I have no idea where the kids got ice). My sons and I tried to organize some games, with a bit of success, but overall, the experience was a waste of time.

When I say “nothing to do,” I mean that literally. During the day, most of the villagers went elsewhere to work in the fields. It was literally deserted except for some guys whom we saw smoking dope. Some women did laundry in the river, but spoke patois when we tried to talk to them. We could walk a couple of miles to a very small store to get a soda. In the evening, people seemed to stay inside their houses, which we were not invited to. There was no library, and since we had gone to do service and to get to know people there, my family hadn’t brought books.

We asked the local man who had invited the service organization if there was anything we could do to be of service. He expressed surprise that we weren’t happy having a “relaxing vacation,” as apparently some previous Americans had viewed that experience. Based on our encounters with one twentysomething American who was staying there for the summer, my family concluded that most other Americans who had gone to do “service” there were really interested getting a tax credit for having access to lots of dope.

"I still think you are focusing too much on the “community service” part and not enough on the cultural exchange / international living experience part. "

The students whom I have interviewed who did “community service” abroad were kids of immigrants who spent the summer with relatives in their parents’ home countries, something that is very typical for kids of immigrants to do.

I’m sure that they learned some things about their parents’ home cultures and also had to stretch their comfort zones to fit in. However, the fact that those students visited their parents’ home countries didn’t make them stand out in the applicant pool as such trips abroad are done by many immigrants’ kids.

I can only remember one student who could articulate anything noncliched about that kind of experience. “I learned that people are people.” "I learned that in the U.S. we have comforts that people in other countries don’t. " “I learned that the country has many poor people,” were typical responses – generalities, cliches, nothing specific or particularly insightful. My impression was that very Americanized kids were against their will sent abroad by their parents, had a miserable time, but decided to exaggerate about the experience in order to impress colleges.

An exception was the young man who literally was the most outstanding student whom I ever interviewed. He told me how uncomfortable that he felt in his parents’ home country because his American ways made him stand out the wrong way, and he didn’t know some traditional ways of behaving. He had a lot of insight about what the trip taught him about fitting in to a new culture, and about what it meant to be caught between two worlds. He also had unusual compassion and empathy in describing how his relatives’ abroad had different perspectives and customs than he had.

As for the community service that they allegedly did abroad in their parents’ home country, I can not remember ever hearing any student describe their service in a way that sounded believable.

For instance, a student described “helping a doctor,” and when I asked for details, the student vaguely described following a doctor around. This was very different from, for instance, a college student whom I know who took a one-week medical mission trip to the Caribbean and who afterward described calming children who were receiving shots, and seeing people who had major, obvious health problems and had waited a year for the medical team to arrive so they could get treatment.

Northstarmom · June 24, 2006, 10:29pm

“Northstarmom, if I were an interviewer for an elite institution, I wouldn’t try to worry about how much the kid impressed ME - I’d want to draw out the kid on the interview enough so that I could write a good summary that sheds light on the kid’s personality. I’d assume that the school already has the resume and activities list, but my job as an interviewer would be to help the ad com get a sense of the human, interpersonal qualities of the student. If I perceived the kid as “passive” I’d see it as my job to help draw the kid out – maybe the student is shy but very compassionate, or has a deep appreciation for art. I would be frustrated if the interview seemed to run into a series of dead ends, but I certainly wouldn’t pass judgment on the quality of the experiences the student had based on their personality at the interview.”

<ol>
<li>The purpose of the inteview is to learn how the student impresses the interviewer, and the interviewer does have to rate the student on various scales. </li>
<li>While the interviewer is supposed to try to draw out the student, if a student is so shy that they can’t be drawn out or are drawn out only with difficulty, when it comes to Harvard, that’s a big sign that the student would not be a good fit for Harvard. </li>
</ol>

Harvard is not a warm, nurturing, compassionate place. It is basically a place where there are lots of very independent Type As who are thrilled to be in a college where they can run with their talents and interests without having a lot of adults looking over their shoulders or people getting into their business.
There are plenty of other colleges that would be excellent fits for the compassionate, shy, smart student.

" would be frustrated if the interview seemed to run into a series of dead ends, but I certainly wouldn’t pass judgment on the quality of the experiences the student had based on their personality at the interview."

The reason that Harvard has alum interviewers is to pass judgment on the students’ quality of experiences. Due to many students getting major help from high priced consultants, parents, etc., many students’ essays do not reflect the students. Also, alum may have a better idea about what Harvard is looking for, and may be less biased, than GCs, who may want their best students to get H acceptances even the students don’t exactly fit what H wants.

For example, I interviewed a student whose application essay was beautifully crafted, indicating a lot of insight into human nature and a lot of skill in writing. When I asked about his favorite book and why he liked that book, he replied “Oedipus Rex,” and then told me the story in excruciating detail. There was nothing in his reply that reflected the depth of analytical ability in the student’s essay.

The student also brought to the interview a little known nonfiction book that the student said he had read and had been moved by. Coincidentally, I had not only read the book, I also knew the book’s editor and had heard the author talk about the book. When I asked the student what he liked about the book, the student’s answer was so brief and vague that it was very obvious to me that the student had never read the book.

marite · June 24, 2006, 10:29pm

NSM:

I still think that you focus too much on the issue of community service, and on how much a kid got out of travel. My own take on the interviews my Ss have had is that the interviews are meant to see how articulate the kids are and whether they fit the resumes/essays/transcripts. They are not meant to pass judgment on how kids choose to spend their time. This is also the impression I got from friends who have been doing alum interviews for Yale and for Harvard.

Now if a student can say nothing very specific about a trip abroad, I would put it down to the student not being very observant or very articulate; that might be a strike against the student but not against the experience per se. Another student going on the exact same trip might be able to wow an interviewer with the insights s/he came back with. A good applicant could write a riveting essay about bagging groceries all summer long.

I think we need to distinguish between the student and the travel and/or community service.

calmom · June 25, 2006, 2:49am

Northstarmom, I’m sorry that you experienced such hostility in the Carribean… especially since you spent money expecting a different experience – but if I were in your shoes, I would have viewed it as a learning experience, albeit an unpleasant one, and not a “waste of time”. That’s part of the experience of traveling abroad and stretching one’s boundaries.

I’m not trying to criticize you at all. You traveled as an adult with two kids along, which put a whole different set of pressures on you, and that definitely is a different experience than teenager traveling alone, and would color your perspective.

But if a kid started telling me about a negative or disappointing experience - I really would want to know what they drew from it.

I still think that you are making the mistake of giving kids short shrift because you don’t seem to get the purpose of “community service” abroad. For example, you compared a high schooler who “helped” a doctor by following him around unfavorably to a college student who went on a medical mission – do you really think that foreign doctors should entrust health care responsibilities to visiting high schoolers? Part of my son’s community service in Thailand was a “volunteer” day in a hospital, too. Of course they didn’t really “help”. They SAW. They saw children in the hospital who had been born with physical deformities, and they got an appreciation of what type of medical issues are faced in rural Thailand. This is not a part of Thailand that tourists in Phuket see. This is something that makes an impact. The locals don’t expect the kids to help, they expect the kids to see and to learn – because maybe someday that kid grows up and goes to medical school and thinks about those kids in Thailand and decides to specialize in pediatric surgery, or maybe another kid grows up and does something entirely different but decides to contribute generously to Doctors without Borders every year. My kid came home and decided he needed to sign up to sponsor a kid through Save the Children. That is the whole point of inviting kids abroad to do community service: to open their eyes to the problems in different parts of the world.

A kid may not end up doing anything to “help”, but he ought to be able to learn. So maybe if I met a teenager with a Caribbean experience such as the one you describe, I might ask, “Why do you suppose the people were so hostile?” “What would make them think you were a CIA agent?” “If it were up to you, what would you do to promote better relations between that country and ours?”

Also, when you focus on the level of involvement, viewing the community service as somehow more worthy if the student showed leadership and organized something – you really are ignoring the fact that existing charities and service organizations need warm bodies, including people who are willing to make phones, stamp envelopes, or wield a hammer for Habitat for Humanities. Yes the kid who organizes a new project in his community looks more impressive than the kid who merely volunteers one day a month at the local homeless shelter. But what happens with these new community service projects that that these superstar students create, manage and organize when they go off to college? Who takes over? Are they there 2 years down the line? And for that matter, have you ever actually investigated the charitable projects the kids claimed to have created? Or do you just take the kid’s word for it?

Years ago I noticed that with most projects and organizations, there were two types of people: those who take all the credit, and those who did all the work. (The credit-takers tended to be male, the ones doing all the work tended to be female – but that’s another story entirely). The ones who take all the credit do tend to be articulate and able to talk a good game about what they are doing – a lot of what they say is b.s., but they are good at that, and they do play a valuable p.r. role for the organization. Any good organization needs a spokesperson at the helm who can make it sound like the organization is bigger and better than it really is. But these “leaders” are seldom the backbone of the organization. The 16 year old who is out taking on the tasks that adults commonly delegate to 16 year old’s is more likely to be genuinely doing what she says she is doing. One of the problems you may be seeing when a kid doesn’t give you the answers you want is that the kid simply is more candid: if the kid has been doing menial work because that’s what is needed, there isn’t all that much to say about it.

Northstarmom · June 25, 2006, 9:20am

“I still think that you are making the mistake of giving kids short shrift because you don’t seem to get the purpose of “community service” abroad. For example, you compared a high schooler who “helped” a doctor by following him around unfavorably to a college student who went on a medical mission – do you really think that foreign doctors should entrust health care responsibilities to visiting high schoolers? Part of my son’s community service in Thailand was a “volunteer” day in a hospital, too. Of course they didn’t really “help”. They SAW.”

Calmom,
You’re missing my point. As I explain, please realize that I’m not talking about your son, who seems to have had a valuable experience.

From the vagueness in how they stated their experience and from the students’ overall passivity, I believe that the students did NOT do any community service abroad. In other words, I think they were lying or at best exaggerating.

There was every indication that most of the students who I referred to who did community service in their parents’ home countries were not doing anything at all except visiting family at their parents’ insistence. They had basically a vacation with family that – to try to impress top colleges – they tacked on some “community service” things to – things that may have even been backed up with a written reference from a “supervisor” who most probably was a relative or family friend.

We see this kind of thing referred to all of the time on CC when students ask if colleges will be impressed if they travel abroad and do CS or create some kind of CS project to help people abroad.

I know that there’s value in shadowing doctors. However, that’s not community service. People who do this out of a sincere interest in health or other vocational issues also can describe those experiences in detail and with interest and enthusiasm. I bet that if I asked your kid to describe their experiences in Thiand, I wouldn’t have to drag the words out of their mouth. and your kid would be able to tell me about some specific events that touched their heart or affected their world view in some way. And I would be money, your kid wouldn’t tell me that the main thing they learned was “People are people.”

If he did menial work, which would be appropriate for a h.s. student to do in that kind of experience, he’d tell me about it, and would tell me what he learned. For instance, the college student whom I know who participated in a health CS to Haiti didn’t do anything glamorous. She distracted kids when they were having shots. She made efforts to use her French to translate. She helped carry a lot of equipment and other things. She watched doctors save lives.

When I talked to her about the experience later, she told me about those things, and talked about them with insight and enthusiasm. Later, she became the first Fulbright at her college, and went to Africa to do research. Now she’s in her last year of med school. The experience that she had in Haiti helped her realize that she wants to work as a doctor in a developing country. However, she’d never act like what she did there was world-changing.

Meanwhile, however, if a college had a choice between a student who had participated in trip like she did to a third world country or a student who had done months of hard work, fund raising, negotiating with various agencies, etc. to set up even a small community service organization or small fund raiser, the latter student probably would stand out most because they would have done most of the work themselves. In saying this, I’m assuming that all things are equal – both students threw themselves into their experiences, described them honestly and appropriately in interviews/essays, and had supporting recommendations.

The exception would be if the student who went abroad raised or earned the $ themselves to go there. That would have taken extra creativity and independence and actually was what the college student whom I referred to also did, which was reflected on her med school and Fulbright applications.

I am not saying that top colleges won’t “count” experiences like your son’s. I am saying that nice as such experiences are, it’s possible that the colleges may view some experiences in the U.S. in an even better light.

I do know a student who came from a low income, uneducated background and managed to spend several weeks in Thailand getting there as a h.s. student with $ he earned (He went to stay with a h.s. friend who was visiting his family over the summer). He had a wonderful experience even though his friend’s family didn’t speak English, and he didn’t speak Thai.

doubleplay · June 25, 2006, 10:14am

I understand what NSM is talking about- selecting one out of ten super-qualified, gifted students is excruciating and somehow or another “cuts” have to be made. 
At the university my son will attend, leadership qualities are highly valued. The college prides itself on the breadth of extracurriculars and devotes huge amounts of $ to them. The students initiate and cultivate programs themselves, without any help from the school other than deep pockets funding. So it follows that this school will seek out the self-assured and the extraverted. In this case, an applicant that comes across as independent, a risk taker (in a good way), affable, outgoing- those qualities are going to be pluses. This does not invalidate the shy but gifted and creative student; it’s just the kind of student they’re looking for at this particular university. The one thing I’ve learned throughout the college search process is that different schools do have different “cultures” and that may have an impact on the type of students selected to fit the profile.
On another note, I’ve observed community service projects involving teens too many times to count, and I’ve never noticed any difference between boys and girls as far as who takes all the credit and who does all the work. ;)

calmom · June 25, 2006, 10:31am

No, you miss MY point:

They aren’t supposed to do community service abroad. Foreign travel for community service is not about doing community service, except for adults working in a professional capacity.

The whole point of high school level community service abroad programs is cultural exchange. That’s a different thing entirely. They just put the community service in to provide the people who are visiting with something to do during the day and some sort of avenue for meeting and working with the locals. The idea is usually to get a bunch of American kids in some rural or semi-rural location where they spend time with local kids and everyone gets to know one another and learn about each other’s culture. They are supposed to learn that people are the same the world over, etc., even if that’s trite and cliched and PC – but its just like when little kids play soccer they are supposed to be learning about teamwork and sportsmanship, not training for the World Cup.

Everyone KNOWS that. No one ever signs up for these things because they think they are really going to be doing significant work – even teenagers are smart enough to figure out that it is really inefficient financially to import unskilled underaged workers from another continent in order to cook meals for orphans or do construction work.

The whole point of the program is the CULTURAL exchange/immersion experience. You can ask where the person was or if they were able to pick up the foreign language or whether they liked the food, but the least important part of the trip was the work. You are using the wrong standard of measurement when you try to plug it into the “community service” slot.

And as to the kids who were shipped off to live with their grandparents in the mother country at their parents’ insistence – they had no choice. They tell you they did “community service” in their countries because they think that’s what you want to hear, and they are assuming you understand that they were very limited in what they could do because of cultural or legal barriers.

What those what you have with those is cultural diversity. You have students who have spent time living in another culture, who are familiar with different cultural norms, who are bilingual.

doubleplay · June 25, 2006, 10:43am

"They aren’t supposed to do community service abroad. Foreign travel for community service is not about doing community service, except for adults working in a professional capacity. "
Oh, but in my line of work (scholarship selection), students routinely put this kind of thing down for community service. And the scholarships are based, in large part, on the type of, amount of, and value of community service.

marite · June 25, 2006, 10:50am

doubleplay:

Again, there needs to be a distinction between applying for scholarships and applying for admissions into college. The folks paying for an expensive trip abroad–the subject of this thread–are not likely to be looking for scholaship money.

calmom · June 25, 2006, 10:53am

Well they do have a community service component and most are going to list it, but my point is that isn’t the dominant purpose of the trip and no one expects the work to be serious or significant, or necessarily worthy of a long explanation. I’m sure your scholarship applications list whatever they can.

I mean, if a kid had a job mowing lawns all summer, and spent 100 hours mowing lawns…you wouldn’t expect the kid necessarily to be able to give a long discourse on lawn-mowing. You’d realize that the work was menial and boring and that one lawn is pretty much the same as any other. So if the same kid is putting in community service hours locally or abroad doing menial tasks, they similarly are not going to have much to talk about.

I remember once asking my daughter what she did when she volunteered at a local homeless shelter when she was in 8th grade or so. She said that most of the time was spent in the kitchen making sandwiches - the kids weren’t even in the same area with the clientele served by the shelter, so they had no contact with anyone other than others working on meal preparation – they were just putting bologna on bread. Somebody’s got to make those sandwiches, so it counts as “community service”… but it doesn’t provide too many talking points.

doubleplay · June 25, 2006, 11:14am

I agree Marite, I kind of split the discussion into two different directions. Although some colleges probably do value community service (it seems to be the buzz word nowadays), and admission to some of the special programs that colleges have to offer sometimes hinges on community service.

As far as making sandwiches, mowing lawns- those are very valuable service opportunities, especially for younger kids. I would never discount hard work- the kids who lay sod or nail up siding on a Habitat house in 90 degree heat- my hat’s off to them. True, it’s not exotic or glamorous. But in our community, organizations are dying for help, especially for the mundane and difficult tasks- the ones you need young strong people to do. You see posters up in all the schools begging for help in local soup kitchens, Habitat, thrift stores, etc. And where do the kids go?

Incidentally, we’ve done quite a bit of work in the local soup kitchen. Where they need the help the most is in food preparation, in the back. It seems that everyone wants to work the line, I guess to expose their kids to the “other half”. But it really takes a lot of people to get that food out there. My credo is- go where the help is needed, go where you can make the most impact, go where your unique skills can be optimized, even if the job is tedious. It’s a form of good stewardship- stewardship of our talents and gifts.

Allmusic · June 25, 2006, 11:15am

And I guess everyone missed MY point (or maybe I am just being obtuse, which is possible), which was do you think the menial service or packaged travel to another country is intrinsically more valuable than the lawn mower or the bologna sandwich maker? Throw out the adcoms, if you will, for a moment.

I don’t mean that in a tongue and cheek way at all; it is a serious question. For the girl going on the European teen tour, do you think there is intrinsically more value to this experience, especially given the exhorbitant costs, as opposed to the lawn mower?

Or does the cost not figure into intrinsic value for some people? Or do we all just differ on what constitutes intrinsic value (that is what I am coming away with here). Just trying to understand how others view this.

doubleplay · June 25, 2006, 11:28am

My vote- the European tour definitely has more intrinsic value, to the girl taking it. In terms of both experiential and personal development. And it’s a lot more educational. And fun.

marite · June 25, 2006, 12:05pm

I agree, doubleplay. Of course, a single activity can combine different goals; still, there needs to be a hiearchy of goals. If it’s educational and experiential growth, then a European tour has greater value. If it’s contributing where one’s help is most needed in the immediate present, then working in your local soup kitchen has greater value.

Trying to do both in one single trip may achieve part of each goal or nothing. It depends on the individual.

And it is also true that young people will return to places where they visited earlier as college students or working adults, with more skills and ability to be truly helpful.

soozievt · June 25, 2006, 12:14pm

So many different things are being talked about here. Originally it was about packaged teen travel tours. I have a child who has taken them.

Doubleplay mentions:
“At the university my son will attend, leadership qualities are highly valued. The college prides itself on the breadth of extracurriculars and devotes huge amounts of $ to them. The students initiate and cultivate programs themselves, without any help from the school other than deep pockets funding. So it follows that this school will seek out the self-assured and the extraverted. In this case, an applicant that comes across as independent, a risk taker (in a good way), affable, outgoing- those qualities are going to be pluses. This does not invalidate the shy but gifted and creative student; it’s just the kind of student they’re looking for at this particular university. The one thing I’ve learned throughout the college search process is that different schools do have different “cultures” and that may have an impact on the type of students selected to fit the profile.”

My D fits the description of leader and depth and breadth of ECs with huge devotiion of time commitments. She is also an initiator. She is assured and extroverted in an interview. She is extremely independent. However, she ALSO has taken travel trips because she wanted to and enjoys travel. It is not the only thing she has done. It is not the focus of her background per se. These trips had value for her, simply put.

Allmusic asks:
"which was do you think the menial service or packaged travel to another country is intrinsically more valuable than the lawn mower or the bologna sandwich maker? Throw out the adcoms, if you will, for a moment.

I don’t mean that in a tongue and cheek way at all; it is a serious question. For the girl going on the European teen tour, do you think there is intrinsically more value to this experience, especially given the exhorbitant costs, as opposed to the lawn mower?

Or does the cost not figure into intrinsic value for some people? Or do we all just differ on what constitutes intrinsic value (that is what I am coming away with here). Just trying to understand how others view this."

For me, both have value. My kid who has gone on tours, has also held jobs (waitress, counselor, etc.) and has also done service in areas relating to her interests. The jobs have value but for different reasons. The trips are nothing like the jobs, however. One is visiting another culture or place and the people who live there and the other aspects of travel. Work is valuable for the responsibility and skills involved. They are both valuable for different reasons. In my kid’s case, she has had both experiences, and both were out of choice and interest.

I also don’ t think a travel trip is only valuable if it includes community service. My D’s trips did not. She has done service at home. These just were not related experiences. I also agree with Calmom about the intrinsic value of the experiences of travel…seeing and doing…not necessarily contributing in a significant capacity. For a high schooler, the experience itself is a learning experience and need not mean the kid had to contribute to the other culture. Contributions can be made in other EC endeavors and/or service at home to school or community.

I also don’t understand why it is necessary to evaluate the worth of these trips. My kid didn’t do them to get into college. She did them cause she wanted to. If she was interested in the trips and loved the experiences, that is all I care about. She is leaving today to work in France. She wanted to do this very much. She will travel when it is over. She is doing this for herself for the experience she wanted to have. Same with the choices she made for summers in HS except I funded those and now I do not. For many kids, these trips represent a small part of their entire HS background. As well, many of the summer programs my children have done each summer, such as camps, cost as much as these trips. So, if we are talking about the value here…for me there was no difference. One of my kids chose to do camp for 8 summers and it cost a lot. The other did camp for 4 summers but chose travel programs for 2 summers. The costs were the same but while one child really loved her 4 years at her camp, she just also wanted a chance to travel and see our country and other countries and this was a way to do that, which she would not have been able to do otherwise. I think her background is enhanced by the fact that she has traveled so much. Now, in college, she has gone the next step and done travel that is not supervised such as driving 6000 to Alaska at age 18 and now working in and traveling in France this summer at 19. The HS trips that were supervised or “packaged” were appropriate means of travel for someone her age at the time. To my D (and to me), travel itself has intrinsic value. It doesn’t substitute for ECs, work experiences, or community service but is just ANOTHER type of experience. She has done all of these. It is not an either/or proposition. It is just part of a well balanced or well rounded life and in this particular kid’s case, “well rounded” is the description of who she is as a person. In fact, one of her college app essay focused on this well roundedness and balancing act to the many sides of her life. Colleges may want certain things or be impressed by certain things but those were not her guiding principles. She is who she is and does what she likes and when it came time to college apps, she showed who she is as a person. Seemed to go just fine for her and I am talking about highly selective colleges.

calmom · June 25, 2006, 12:24pm

Allmusic – kids can do both. My kids have made sandwiches at soup kitchen and they have held down paying jobs and they have traveled to Thailand and Russia and (now) China for homestays and cultural exchanges. They have also vacationed in Europe and seen many sights, though as luck would have it they had the opportunity to travel with their grandparents rather than on a packaged tour.

I feel all travel is valuable - if the parents have the money to pay for it, I can’t see what the problem is. I’m a little dismayed at the idea that everything a kid does is to somehow build up the college resume – I’m very glad I indulged my daughter’s travel bug without concern as to the havoc it wreaked on her high school schedule.

But why does it have to somehow measure up against something else? It’s what the kid wants to do and the parents have the money to pay for it. So what’s wrong with it? I personally don’t understand the whole music camp/dance camp thing - but I don’t have any criticism of it. It’s just that my daughter - a dancer – never wanted to spend her summers doing the same thing she did the rest of the year - she always wanted a break to do something different. So to our family, the cost of a summer dance intensive would have seemed like paying extra for something we already had plenty of (dance training), and not a particularly valuable thing to do with our limited resources.

jazzymom · June 25, 2006, 12:31pm

Throw the adcoms out for a moment? On CC? Can we do that?

Seriously, Allmusic, you may be asking us to compare apples and oranges here because the intrinsic value of travel is different from the intrinsic value of working at something which is tedious but needs to be done. A teenager may not have fun or gain important insights from making sandwiches or mowing lawns or working the family produce stand but if the effort is sustained over time, one would learn self-discipline and a certain amount of self sacrifice.

I have to say that thinking it over the last day or so, that my opinion has changed about the intrinsic value of even the “dubious” packaged tour of comfy European cities for teens traveling in packs. Any travel is good for American kids, any global change in perspective.

<pre><code>(-------- and cheers: I digress here to say: Provincial? Moi? )
</code></pre>

On a scale, a trip to a third-world country would have more emotional wallop and eye-opening power than Europe (it did for me when we went to live in Kenya when my sons were little) and a trip to study language while living with a family also would have more educational value. My personal preference, if I’m going to spend a mind-boggling amount of money expanding my child’s horizons, is to spend it on foreign travel that involves education or community service. But if some kids are not into that, I do see the value of them going abroad somewhere, anywhere, and soaking up as much foreign culture as they can whether it’s in the museums or the pastry shops. JMO, and leaving the adcoms thrown out as it were.

doubleplay · June 25, 2006, 12:36pm

Everything has intrinsic value to someone. It depends on who’s judging, what’s being judged, why, and what for. Originally I was taking on the question from the perspective of an evaluator for CS awards and scholarships. Most posters are looking at it from the perspective of maturity and personal development. Northstarmom took it on from the perspective of evaluating uber-students who apply to Harvard from ultra-incredible backgrounds. With the case of admissions to very competitive colleges, it could depend on the pool. That is, if most students have traveled extensively, then maybe the student who flips burgers stands out as unique. Or vice versa.

Allmusic, within what context are you asking people to evaluate the intrinsic value?

Allmusic · June 25, 2006, 5:02pm

Doubleplay, not even certain in what context I was asking…think I am musing out loud here. I guess, if anything, it was the fact that others here don’t seem as incredulous about the costs as I do, so I was wondering if people deemed the “travel” itself as intrinsically valuable, as opposed to anything the student might do on such a trip.

If nothing else, this thread has caused me to think a little bit differently about the whole packaged trip scenario. Like Jazzymom, I don’t think it is something my husband and I would encourage without service or education as a part, but I can see another POV, thanks to this conversation.

calmom · June 25, 2006, 7:53pm

Allmusic, I for one do think the travel is intrinsically valuable. I’d consider the $6900 teen tour to Europe a little pricey and probably shop for a cheaper package. It’s not the kind of trip I would just give a kid on a whim – but I actually would have paid for a tour of Europe this summer if my daughter had ended up going to a UC campus rather than Barnard. I actually like the idea of a packaged teen tour better than the backpacking-with-her-boyfriend idea that my d. was talking about.

With financial aid factored in, the annual out-of-pocket price differential for us between UC Santa Cruz & Barnard is more than $9000. I know that you understand why I am willing to pick up that tab, but I’ll bet there are many parents in my community who would be absolutely incredulous at that choice. And if we are going to start having a debate over worthiness in which service is valued over pleasure, then I am sure it looks to a lot of people like I am simply paying a large premium to send my daughter to a college filled with spoiled rich girls.

It’s only money, and what we CC parents are paying for college would buy a lot of pleasure trips to Europe. There is a quality-of-life thing that plays into it all as well. I mean, if I had more money at my disposal, I might feel that it was wrong to deny my kid the opportunity to travel. I might feel that every young person should see London and Paris and Rome, simply as part of the basic cultural experience that all young people should have.

Monetary, intellectual, social value of HS summer experiences

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