<p>My son worked about 35 hours a week for the first 6 weeks of the summer. He had visited a few colleges Ski Week, Spring Break, etc… and then we hit 3 on our way to our family reunion in August. In addition he trained with the team for cross-country and went away to ASB Camp.</p>
<p>Mine only did volunteer and unpaid political internship.</p>
<p>Most places around us won’t hire under 18; the few left wouldn’t permit vacation. His big EC is a volunteer instructor at a 12 day camp and he wasn’t willing to give that up. </p>
<p>Summer visits worked fine for us. The schools we visited in the summer had enough kids on campus that it wasn’t “empty.” His HS schedule just doesn’t permit a lot of during the year visits.</p>
<p>If you don’t want your child to go to a certain school - visit in the summer!!! Seriously - it is really hard to get a good sense of a school. My dd worked in the summer since freshman year but has a job that she puts in a schedule request every 2 weeks (lifeguarding) so there is some flexibility.</p>
<p>I know some people think we were barking mad, but we visited colleges during Feb and April breaks junior year and lots more the summer before senior year. We also have a family reunion every summer, so no, our son had no time for a job. He did learn a lot about himself when exploring schools. An unpaid job, but still important.</p>
<p>D was a lifeguard summer after junior year… seems that every college app he filled out asked is he had held a job, so I’m thinking your counselors are not just telling you that for grins. We have visited 8 colleges over the course of 3 busy long weekends. We figured out which were closest to each other, and mapped out our trips so we could fly to one location, rent a car and drive to several others. We were able to see 2-4 schools each trip by doing it that way. We didn’t even do our first trip until October of senior year… better to see schools in full swing, not on summer schedule, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Once you have narrowed your choices down to those colleges that are in the final rounds of consideration, you should definitely visit while school is in session. The visit should be on a school day to get a much better sense of the school. It does make a big difference. So much of the college experience is about the people you will go to school with and not as much about the buildings that you will attend class in…</p>
<p>The classrooms themselves seemed to be the least important aspect of the college visit. We wanted to see and talk to students, listen to some of the professors, and view the support facilities such as dining halls, fitness centers, and dorms. Those can make the difference between a great college experience and a barely tolerable one.</p>
<p>We couldn’t visit every school of interest while in session. After acceptances, he picked schools to revisit in session.</p>
<p>Starting the summer of his 9th grade year, my son did website design and photography on assignment(made posters for parents with kids in team sports, for example) and also was paid to help someone start a video recording business during high school. He didn’t start working for a “real” company until after his senior year, but he’s always been pretty resourceful in finding ways to make money. He was an early fan of Craigslist, finding “gigs” to provide income during high school and all through college, primarily computer or photography work of one kind or another. At one point during high school we asked him to stop taking on so much outside work, as we were afraid it was impacting his schoolwork. He didn’t listen, but it turned out fine. He’s a college graduate working in state government now, and I think the work he did in high school honed his networking skills.
My kids both did college visits during their spring breaks, which didn’t match up to most colleges’ breaks, so they were able to see the schools in session.</p>
<p>Both my S’s worked year 'round at a big chain grocery store from the day they turned sixteen until they left for college. They rarely had much trouble getting time off if they put in a request in advance.</p>
<p>D had unpaid internship, 40 hours per week, and took a week off for us to do college visits. Might be harder with a paid job.</p>
<p>It’s best to visit during the school year, when school is in session. However, didn’t work with our schedules.</p>
<p>Everyone else has already made the point about not visiting schools when no one is around, if you can avoid it.</p>
<p>The summer between junior and senior year my son made the most money he ever has doing yard work and assisting on some construction jobs. The summer after he graduated was a bust as he ended up needing surgery the week after school got out and had to be immobile for nearly a month. Then it was July and we had a drought and there were no yards to mow or bushes to prune. AND his college started early. A bunch of other kids he knows went to Europe after graduation or planned other fun end-of-high-school trips.</p>
<p>Now he is halfway through freshman year and already mapping out his work plan for the summer. He has not liked not having much spending money of his own and we haven’t given him more than he absolutely needs (partly because we want to encourage him to get a campus job).</p>
<p>We ended up taking two trips junior year (one road, one air), one road trip fall of senior year, and one flying trip in the spring after he had his acceptances and wanted to make a final decision. You don’t need to visit EVERY school on his list but I would encourage you to visit the safety you think looks best, just so he has a decent fallback that he might actually be excited about.</p>
<p>Our GC (and others) have told us that colleges like to see “jobs” on the summer activity lists. It shows responsibility and maturity. Doesn’t really matter what the job is: lifeguarding, counselor, clerk, etc.–they don’t expect HS kids to have fancy titles. Anything they could be fired from is good. While internships can be great fun for the student, some schools regard them as an indication that mom and dad have enough pull to get their kid a position–especially in high-income communities. Volun-tourism is not always the ‘gold star’ you might think it would be (again, it’s a sign that the parents have money to spend) Better to volunteer close to home. Our GC said the worst thing your child can tell an admissions officer is that they spent the summer studying for the SAT.</p>
<p>Touring colleges in the depths of summer is a last-resort, best saved for tacking onto an already planned vacation or if a collection of schools is on the other side of the country. Your child won’t get a sense of the student body, the local vibe or even typical weather during the school year. I made sure my D visited the Pacific Northwest in March. </p>
<p>Check with your high school, ours allotted students a certain number of school days during senior year to go visit colleges. Even fall weekends are better than July and August.</p>
<p>Yes my D had a summer job. You aren’t visiting/vacationing all summer long. It can be a long and idle stretch of time without a job. It is common here for students to work over the summer. Most places that hire students know the drill and allow for time off as long as the kid is responsible enoughto ask off ahead of time. D never had an issue.</p>