<p>How important is how a student spends summers? </p>
<p>We live in a rural area with limited opportunities and cannot afford expensive summer programs. My senior in high school son did well in the college admissions process. He worked 10th grade summer full-time with Youth Conservation Corps and 11th grade summer: Governor's School. My daughter has an August birthday so cannot work her 10th grade summer. She will spend it like last year helping with tennis day camps, hospital volunteering, and counselor assistant for several weeks at residential 4-H & GS camps. I've read that these activities are not particularly impressive to selective colleges. I'd like next summer to be educationally enriching (and she would, too), but she loves her summer volunteering activities. How is Governor's School viewed by college admissions? What are other low-cost alternatives? She is white and our family income is <60K but assets usually throw us out of low-income consideration - we're quite frugal, have saved and been fairly lucky with investments.</p>
<p>She is ranked 3/800 in a non-competitive, public high school. She has not taken the SAT, but scored 191 on the PSAT. She scored a 4 in AP World History her Freshman year and is taking AP Govt. this year. She will take AP Bio, AP US Hist, AP Lang, and hopefully either AP Psch or AP Human Geo next year along with several gifted/honors classes. She's class president and in Marching and Symphonic Bands (but will not continue band in order to get more French and AP classes the next two years). She plays tennis but is average.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for input and ideas.</p>