I wanted my kids to get jobs, but they didn’t have driver’s licenses or cars, and they couldn’t get jobs within walking distance because they were filled by locals before my kids came home from boarding school. My daughter did have a part-time job at an art camp for a couple of years, and she attended a writing program one summer. Otherwise both kids mainly did volunteer work. Each also spent a month abroad one summer. They got into good colleges and had jobs last summer, after freshman year. For this coming summer, they are stressing about internships…
I just remembered that my daughter wrote an article on this topic for her school paper. She worked as a teaching assistant and RA for a pricey summer program at her school and wrote an opinion piece on how “pre-college programs won’t get you accepted.”