"They’ve become big in the how-to-get-a-leg-up-in-college-admissions circus: pre-college summer programs for teens at America’s most elite universities, including Harvard and Stanford. But are they what they seem?
Costing thousands of dollars, many of these programs send letters to students “inviting” them to apply, and suggest attending will provide a benefit for their college applications. And many students who can’t afford several thousand dollars for a few weeks of a summer program wind up fundraising, with guidance on how to do it from the schools themselves." …
https://beta.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/08/28/americas-elite-universities-are-making-millions-off-summer-programs-teens-do-they-really-help-kids-get-into-college/
Great article! Other than maybe being able to write a better “why us” essay, these high cost programs are money grabs.
The only ones worth attending are the free ones.
While most of the free summer programs are in fact among the most prestigious, it is not exactly true that they are the only ones worth attending if one’s goal is to impress upon admissions officers the qualifications of the applicant.
There are a number of extremely competitive math and science summer programs that cost money, in some case substantial money, though most tend to have generous financial aid. These generally have admissions rates less than 10-15% from an already self-selected applicant group.
We have personal experience with Canada/USA Mathcamp ($4500) and Summer Science Program ($7000) and can confirm that the majority of kids in those programs wind up at top 20 universities (or equivalent). Of course, correlation is not causation, but the SSP kids are particularly impressive - about half wind up at HYPMS and Caltech. See for yourself by looking through the college outcomes for each of the cohorts for the past 20 years in the reports linked here: https://summerscience.org/about/the-universal-times-newsletter/
My advice is that if you get into Canada/USA Mathcamp or SSP (and no doubt a few others), don’t let the cost convince you that it is not worthwhile!
Don’t hock yourself for a program you can’t afford. Don’t believe they’re automatically a leg up. No top college just looks at summer studies and rubber stamps.
A lot of these programs are profit generators, not always even run or staffed by the college whose facilities they use.
Addition to my post 4 above about the college outcomes for kids who attend SSP.
I looked at the cohort who went in summer 2016, almost all of whom were rising seniors. 47 out of 65 kids later enrolled at HYPMS or Caltech, constituting 72% of the group. The other 18 kids had to settle for lesser universities including Cambridge, Cornell, Chicago and Duke (2 each), Columbia and UPenn (1 each), and University of Michigan (3). Two poor souls apparently couldn’t get into a real university and had to go to Amherst College.
No, not a “rubber stamp,” but astute parents and applicants recognize that certain summer programs provide an “early read” of how you stack up in the general applicant pool.
@dropbox77177 I don’t disagree with your last statement. There are a number of free summer programs, however, that serve the exact same purpose. My D attended one. Sub 10% acceptance rate and all were admitted to T20 schools. If you don’t mind dropping $7k for an early read, sure why not. That price was too steep for my tastes so my D only applied to free summer programs.
No early read can be assumed. Not even an LoR from that teacher can matter. Many of them aren’t even employed by the colleges, are unknown to adcoms. The colleges offer these programs, one way or another. That’s it. No tip.
What you may be confusing is the sort of kid who goes after a variety of challenging and diverse experiences, in the first place. The best of them are already highly competitive (in all respects, not just hs impressiveness,) have paid the right dues already and are simply supplementing. They’d have similar chances without the “Pay to play” programs. In fact, many kids gain an advantage via the right other summer experiences.
Also, big difference between programs that pay a stipend and those that collect your monies.
As with most admissions bullets, it pays to dig deeper.
IMO, whether or not a summer program is free or not isn’t important. What is important is if the student getting an additional experience related to their interests.
Getting an “education” is much more than whether or not it’s helps for college admissions. For example, D20 wanted to learn more about media and marketing and enrolled in a sleep away summer class at UCSD for 4 weeks. She had a great experience, opened her eyes to a new subject with lots of classroom discussion from kids from all over the US and world. Will this experience directly help her get into college, no it won’t, but indirectly she has open her mind to new ways of seeing the world and challenging herself to continue to learn, read, explore, and think critically. These traits will be helpful once she is in college.
All these experiences will shape our kids in ways that don’t just translate to “getting a leg up in college admissions”.