If a college student who wants to have all his summers “off”’ to relax and have fun he or she will likely be in for an unpleasant surprise when searching for a job as graduation approaches.
There’s no summer “work” in college, but there is real work to be done in the summer - jobs, internships, full time volunteering, etc. Success after college requires a lot more than just solid course-related effort during the school year.
When finals end, school ends! As mentioned most schools have summer requirements for matriculating students but other than that I haven’t seen any summer assignments in 3 summers between college terms.
Well…some schools do give summer work. Kiddo #1 has had some. Before freshman year, she received notice from one of her professors about material she would be tested on at the start of class. It took her a long time to learn the material. She also had a “common read” with the Freshman class that was discussed in English (the author also came to campus and she was required to attend his talk). The book was handed out at freshman orientation. This year, the honors college is requiring everyone to read a specific book over summer. She also had a professor send out a syllabus and advise them to get a head start on the reading. (She has a major and minor that fall in the humanities/liberal arts discipline and there’s a ton of reading for her classes.)
Many students do like to read ahead so get the book list and syllabi ahead of the classes and read through the summer or over winter break. Danger is if you change classes and did all that learning for nothin’.
None for my girl. BUT she and her friends worked their tushes off to find internships to round out their resumes. Most of those include some kind of research component and poster presentation. And not all those internships were fun and games either. My daughter’s ex-boyfriend has entertained us for hours with stories about the horrors of his summer internships.
Oh, and as others mentioned, my daughter’s summer included a healthy dose (probably 100 or more hours) of MCAT studying this year as well.
At sons school all freshman are given a book to read at orientation. They then take a 1hr freshman course their first semester that does not count toward their degree requirement. The book among other things are discussed in this class. The books over the last three years have been very good reads. The author of the book does a presentation at the end of the semester.
This is very common with my D and her peers. She took a class on Nabokov last Spring with a reading list of 9 of his books so she read 2 or 3 during Winter break on top of the of the couple she had read previously and stayed ahead of the reading during the term. This summer she learned Python for an Astrophysics class in the Fall and is currently completing the programming assignments for the Data Structures class she’ll be taking - all her friends are doing the same. Some kids will complete all the programming assignments and then take an extra class to get ahead to make Senior year as much about their research topic as possible.
This summer (summer before freshman year) my daughter had to read a book. For her anatomy class she needed to do an online pre-test, not for a grade, so the professor knew what he had to work with. She also had to complete an online drug/sexual assault awareness class.
I had a lot of homework this summer, in terms of setting up accounts and making sure the right offices had the right information. 8-}
No summer work after pre-freshman year orientation stuff for my D16. She has had us order books in the summer to get a head start reading (only the history subjects she loves).
The parent’s homework is NEVER done. The summer before my daughter started college, I think I made a call to someone at the school every day following up on everything from missing scholarships to getting her name right on school records. Wrong meal plan, wrong scholarship amounts, outside scholarships. Turned out they had two student files for her so half the stuff was going into the wrong file.
I’m still trying to get a refund from this summer’s tuition, and I haven’t even opened up the fall statement yet. That daughter is going to graduate in December rather than May, so we’re going to see if any of the FA can be used in the fall rather than the spring. All they can say is NO.
My kid goes to GT and there is no prework before a semester except for capstone senior deaign projects. That being said she is either is at school in the summer taking a full load of classes or working at her coop. So there were no free summers in college.