<p>Hi, my child has received a very impressive looking and sincere sounding invitation to the National Youth Leadership Forum on Law. The letter came from a non profit organization with the same name ("National Youth Leadership Forum). This particular forum is held in Washington DC. and involves a cost of approximately $1600 for tuition and room and board, not counting airfare and lunches.
Anyone out there who could share their experience? How reputable, is it worth the money and missing one week of school for a high school student during senior year?</p>
<p>This is just my opinion. Many of those conferences provide a great learning experience for high school students. The students get away from home for a few weeks, usually stay on a college campus, have excellent exposure to prominent guest speakers as well as sight seeing and wonderful meals and friendships. – they meet interesting new people, etc. If you can afford it, it will probably be a wonderful and memorable experience for your son or daughter. Plus, they get a good taste of college life, and can become more motivated to do well in high school.</p>
<p>If your intention is just to get another EC credential for the college application, save your money and have your son or daughter do some volunteer work instead.</p>
<p>I think colleges will like to see that your child has done something productive like attend a seminar. But, it won’t be a heavy hitting credential. </p>
<p>My son goes to a private school, so spending the extra money was not in the budget for us after paying private school tuition. He did manage to get a full scholarship to a great program, he went to Washington DC for a couple of weeks, and had the time of his life. It is now two years later, and he still stays in touch with the students he met at the seminar.</p>
<p>Good luck with the decision.</p>
<p>Thanks, that’s great advice!</p>
<p>My S went to the one on National Defense. It was a worthwhile experience. Very well run, learned a great deal and met interesting kids from around the country. Worth the money from the standpoint of the experience. In terms of “how it looks” probably not worth it as the only admission requirement is paying the tuition.</p>
<p>Got this too… Is it a scam? My son wasn’t nominated by a teacher, and has slightly better than average grades. He is in NHS, though. He expressed interest in political science as a major when registering for SAT. He got the big fancy packet to attend the NYLF on National Security. Is it worth missing school and the $$$$?? Thanks… any experiences to share?</p>
<p>My s2 got this and he has several Cs and barely scored above 1000/1600 on his first SAT. I was not impressed that they sent it to him since according to their literature, he should never have qualified. I threw it out.</p>
<p>Hi Kevinsmom,
My child is in NHS, too. Her GPA has been slipping under 3.5 lately though. But why should only the superachievers get all the breaks? Just because someone doesn’t have a straight 4.0 does that mean they should not have opportunities like this?
So far I am undecided. I’d like to see more initiative on behalf of my child to explore some paid or volunteer work in her field of interest during the summer. Why miss school if you can kill time in the summer and get experience?
Again, am undecided. Anyone else out there who has some input?</p>
<p>To be honest, I throw this in the trash, and so does everyone else we know. I don’t like the element of sort of shaking down the GCs for “names,” and our kids are in an underperforming high school with 400 plus students per GC…GCs don’t know the kids obviously. It feels like a faux selection process number one for an expensive “citizenship camp” week to me.
If you child has not had a trip to the Capital, I can see that it could be stimulating (I certainly would have been impressed by this outing if I had attended from the perspective of my early teens). But I don’t think it signifies anything much to college admission officers and I think it is on the same footing as Whos Who and the books they hawk. They also get names from schools.
Volunteer work and/or a real job or a real course of some kind might be a better use of your son or daughter’s time but more certainly might be a better use of your money.</p>
<p>One of my daughters, the more social one, went on one of these. It was a totally awesome sleepover. If your child is way ahead academically and you can afford it, it can be fun, but he or she will lose some sleep and slip in his or her homework a little.</p>
<p>My son went to National student leadership conference? It was supposed to be for engineering however he felt like they didn’t spend much time on that, did sight seeing shared a room with 3 other kids, felt it wasn’t very selective, and some of the counselors did not seem very happy to be there, and no I don’t think it matters on their resume. I actually wanted to write to them to complain,but let it go. My husband went to pick my son up , and the dorm was a mess litter etc. Sorry!</p>
<p>My son has gotten dozens of these solicitations. We throw every one in the trash. They are blanketly sent to tens of thousands of students, so I wouldn’t in any way be swayed by the glossy photos or promises, unless it was something your kid really wanted to do…and you had the money to do it.</p>
<p>Pick the program carefully. Both My S and niece went to NYL in Washington DC for politics and security and there were a lot of interesting things they did beside sight seeing. Not something for college app but both met a lot of people, got exposure to capital hill and DoD and found it interesting. They seemed to be well supervised and kept busy. Other S went on a different program to Europe that was a waste, not well supervised and generally unsatisfactory.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think these programs do much. They are vanity programs made to lure parents into thinking their kids are so special they got these invitations. From the TIP programs during the summer to the Honor societies, Who’s Who, etc. Unless they offer scholarships or are “free” I would pass and make my own opportunities for enrichment in my community. If you live near colleges, they offer classes for h.s. students probably for a lot less. </p>
<p>Some of the colleges host sophomores and juniors as a recruiting technique and those are less expensive. </p>
<p>I don’t buy all the hype. Shipping the kids off to who knows where with who knows who doesn’t make leadership. Giving them responsibility, teaching them to give back to the community and a job does a lot!</p>
<p>It is not selective at all , therefore not prestigious. Money = participation.
Go if money is not an issue, as those conferences are quite expensive.</p>
<p>I consider it an expensive field trip that gives no additional weight on your college application.</p>
<p>Hi, I just recieved a Letter from the National Youth Forum, and Iam wondering if it actually exists or is it a scam?
thank you</p>
<p>It was a fun (for my daughter) expensive (for us) sleep-over. It probably doesn’t affect admissions.</p>
<p>My son did the one on Technology in San Jose a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. We took a great California vacation while he was there, and incorporated a few college visits into the time before and after. He got to meet a lot of kids in his area of interest, hear some top notch speakers, visit local tech companies (which are national in that area) and a college, and work on some projects. They went into SF a couple of times, including a baseball game, to Santa Cruz for a day, and attended the 4th of July fireworks. So it was semi-vacation, I guess, but did give him an idea of what it would be like to work in that part of the country. </p>
<p>As far as admissions, he had been attending computer-based age appropriate workshops for the previous four years at various colleges, so it might have been one more indication of his passion. But we signed him up for his own sake, not anything to do with college prep or EC’s. It was expensive, but they did stay in a very nice hotel and had some great experiences.</p>
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<p>Does it exist? Unfortunately, yes, it does exist as it is one of the cousins of this close-knit family that shares prestigious sounding names and usually the same address in Washington where your money will end up. </p>
<p>Is it scam? That depends on your definition of a scam. While it is a small miracle that those organization find enough gullible families year after year, the “organization” behind those program seems to stay one step ahead of the law … a clear testament that if you pay off enough people and bribe the rest in Washington, scamming families remains a legitimate passtime in our capital. </p>
<p>Will you hear a few glowing commentaries? Of course, nobody likes to admit to have been taken and fallen for the blatant flattery and gold embossed letters. </p>
<p>If you have money to burn, send a couple of hundred dollars to the organizers, they’ll be happy to include your offspring among the successful candidates of the year and send you a diploma with all the gold and glitter you may dream off. It be cheaper and accomplish just as much.</p>
<p>I am sure that any young person could learn something from these experiences. I would have loved their programs but I had not been in large cities much in my teens and my kids have seen a lot and done some summer college programs. To be quite frank, these go into our trash can, and we know no kid who has signed on as it seems more like an expensive field trip. The GCs at our school give the names when asked…although this year they stated my son’s selection was from test scores in the cover letter. I find the merit aspect to be rather dubious.</p>