Pricey summer pre-college programs won't get your kid into a better school

Parents Forum
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D16 attended a month-long program in her junior year. The Canadian university she now attends has specifically said that they give an additional admissions “point” for attending the program. This would probably, at least partially, explain why she got in to her highly competitive program with a lower than average GPA.

I gave S23 the choice of a CTY summer program or an arts program for the summer between 8th and 9th grades. He chose an arts program. He got into a highly selective program which has a year round school. He auditioned for the year round school, but did not get in. The program lit a fire in him and he is now determined to make that art his career. He’s in the middle of auditioning for other year round programs.

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I agree 100% with @RichInPitt - painting all summer programs as “ a type of summer camp for kids.” is a lazy, simplistic generalization.

My kid has been attending summer courses with CTD (that’s Northwestern’s version of JHU’s CTY) since she was in 3rd grade. The point was never to enhance her chances of getting into a “good” college. It was always about giving her the chances to learn new and interesting things with other gifted kids. It was about “expanding her mind” (to be pompous), and about making sure that summer break wasn’t an “intellectual wasteland”.

While in High School, she took Neuroscience and a Creative Writing Workshop. Aside from the high school credit she received, she was able to develop her interest in Neuroscience (her present major), and not only was she was able to develop as a writer, she had the privilege of taking a workshop with one of the up and coming stars in creative writing.

She was always extremely excited to start, she always had an amazing time while being there, and she always learned a lot, and made great friends.

The classes may help a kid get into a college, though in indirect ways. First, the CTD classes appear on the transcript, and, aside from the fact that they demonstrate additional rigor, they can demonstrate interest in a person’t chosen field (taking advanced classes during summer break). Classes like creative writing workshops do increase one’s writing abilities which help in things like the application essays.

Moreover, these classes can open other opportunities. For example, a poem that my kid wrote during her creative writing workshop was a finalist in an international competition, and was published. Things like this do enhance one’s application, albeit in minor ways. Other poems she published resulted in some other great opportunities, though she did not follow up on them, since she was taking a different direction (STEM related). However, for somebody who was more focused on creative writing, those opportunities would likely have provided all sorts of “enhancements” to their applications.

All that being said, the fact that the organization is connected to Northwestern University, and the summer courses were mostly on the NU campus, would not provide any higher chances of being accepted to NU than similar courses with Johns Hopkins’ CTY. Nor would those CTY courses provide any more advantage for students applying to JHU than would the courses provided by CTD.

PS. another way in which they helped my kid get into college, was by demonstrating to her what it was like to share a classroom with kids who were just as engaged and as bright as she was. Knowing that she could have this at college kept her focused on doing well enough at school to keep open as many college opportunities as possible. There is a difference in how a kid who is bored in most classes sees their high school years if they know that things will get better after they graduate, as opposed to feeling that “being in class sucks”, and that college would be just another four years of the same thing.

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I know two kids who did the summer engineering program for high schoolers at UC Berkeley. Both discovered they loved the “college experience” – and didn’t want to be engineers! So the program was very valuable for both of them - it got them excited about college and helped define their academic trajectory.

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@MWolf. Same program my son did was the equinox ctd at Northwestern. Same with the Berkeley program he realized he belonged with these intellectual curious kids. Plus…it was fun.

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Does it really matter whether or not a summer program helps with admission to top schools?

What matters is the intent. Some of the program providers and some of the parents / students buy into the “I win, you lose” mentality to gain “an edge over their college peers.” Very toxic and destructive.

For kids attending summer programs for the right reasons, great.

But there is also something to be said for the countless students that sit on their rears over the summer, hang out with kids that don’t define themselves by their “gifted academic” status, and go on to ultimately be wildly successful and happy in school and beyond.

Buying into a culture that promotes the idea that only the best can make it academically and otherwise could be a factor why so many young kids consider suicide. Very sad.

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D19 had an enormous amount of fun at her Equinox programs (which one did your son take?). The CTD residential programs truly have everything - great instructors, smart and interesting peers, interesting after class activities, a beautiful campus, a campus town, and the lake front. It really is a taste of the best parts of the “college experience”, at least for these types of kids.

I think that it was during her first residential program at CTD (the late lamented Apogee program) that she told us “I don’t have to explain myself!”.

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@MWolf. It was the summer AP Stats program I talked about up thread. Whole year of AP stats in 3 weeks. Living on campus etc. They call this fun… Lol…

We found out about the NW programs late. Really greatly organized and great enrichment.

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My D19 did a summer program every year from 8th grade summer until after graduation. It was a requirement of her scholarship program, and they paid for them when she didn’t get a scholarship. They were helpful in helping her figure out that she didn’t like what she thought she liked, getting her some language immersion, allowing her to travel internationally, getting her college credits that helped to validate her homeschooling, and allowing her research and presenting experience on a college level that she wouldn’t have otherwise had access to. My D20, without a scholarship subsidizing her, has only had the opportunity to participate in one summer program, a ballet intensive. It took us three years to save for it and I’m certain it has no bearing on her college applications at all. It was just important to us that she get to have the kind of immersive experience her sister had at least once.

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Not only do colleges look at the grades and test scores, with the holistic approach, they look at EVERYTHING. ECs and what kids do in their spare time (like that even exist anymore) becomes more important the more elite the school to which he/she applying.

I don’t think it’s as important WHAT exactly kids do, it’s that that do something that shows more motivation than the average kid…hat can be gained in self awareness and confidence, not a direct 1+1=2 equation. When I was in high school I spent my summers playing Nintendo64 and driveway basketball. My D20 has way more motivation and drive than I did at her age…but, I had a god friend who went to Michigan and all he ever did over the summers was cut a few lawns for extra cash.

The elite schools we talk about here on CC want these highly motivated kids and summer activities help them to “cull the herd” so to speak. The less selective schools don’t care so much…although summer activities could come into play for scholarship applications.

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My kids both did CTY summer camps from 5th grade until they aged out.

It never occurred to me to think about the implications for their college admissions. They went because it was fun and took classds that looked interesting to them.

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Factor in college acceptance? Likely a big No. But My kids have done some really interesting Summer camps. They all cost a fortune ( one or two were inexpensive). They learned some good skills at various camps and enjoyed the experiences. Now that they are getting closer to college we don’t plan to do any of these programs unless they are 1K or less. I think some are so expensive that they would put our kids into the privileged category which we are desperately trying to avoid.
Kids plan to focus on doing more volunteering and working this Summer.

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In addition to academic and career exploration, these camps can be very helpful for working parents whose kids do not wish to sit at home all summer. Public transport may limit local options for young teens to do much.

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I used to work in Princeton during grad school. I made $100/hour to do summer skills tutoring for students who were going to college or entering their senior year in high school. Then I taught at an academic skills camp that was charging $5,000/month to prepare students for college.

I can tell you I can get any student ready for college and it’s not worth paying that much for my time.

The best thing you can do to prepare your student for college: make sure they’re confident writers.

I gave up that cushy gig as a tutor to build a technology that could do everything I did to help students be better writers automatically. That’s right. My brain, available online and as much as the student wants, for a fraction of what I would charge to spend an hour of my time sitting at Starbucks drinking coffee while the student typed.

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I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but these camps are one of the reasons that the income gap gets bigger between high SES and middle class. We’re not even talking upper class vs poverty. One of my friends went to the Stanford pre-collegiate one, there’s wealth there, even though Stanford claims that the admit rates for those camps are 20%, so not a everyone gets in, money grab.

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Agreed, thelonius. At least the good news is the truly prestigious camps that are themselves useful for college admission are almost always free.

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I’ve read that the competitive/free camps may have slight sway in admissions, others not so much. BUT if a camp helps a student understand what kind of major and campus they like (or dislike), that could be a valuable thing. So if it’s not a financial hardship to the family, it may make sense.

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At first I felt vindicated that we hadn’t spent extra money on these camps. Now I feel guilty again that so many families still think it was worth it.

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@ultimom. It is what it is. Most of us that sent kids to “x” camp/experience seemed to be happy with the end results. Plus getting rid of them for a few weeks isn’t necessarily all the bad… Lol…

Any enrichment experience is what the kids make of it. Some are super expensive and some great ones really are not. But I do think kids gain confidence and experience just being on their own a bit. Whether it was a local but sleep away chess camp or an away engineering camp at an university, I think the kids gain something from getting away from mom and dad.

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I do know plenty of people who attended and enjoyed such camps, but deliberately omitted them from college applications to avoid an appearance of privilege. It is not at all clear to me that fee charging programs aid in college admission, but they may benefit a student in other ways

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Not sure the question but any scholarship can /should be mentioned if your gonna use the money.