Hey all, I’m just wondering how much does what you do during the summer affect selective college admissions? I’m just a little concerned because I don’t really do really competitive summer programs like TASP or RSI, or want to shell out the money for expensive pre-college programs that are often $5000+ (my family could find the money but I feel like it’s just kind of a waste for a lot of them). This summer before my senior year I didn’t really do anything outstanding, except Girls State (a week-long program, very short), weekly music therapy volunteering, starting an internship in August, visiting a few colleges, and writing apps/summer homework. It was a combination of not getting into the program I wanted (I was waitlisted at a competitive writing camp) and bad timing (it was too late to apply to other camps by the time I found out about them… it’s hard to do research on good summer camps because there are so many). My other summers had nothing truly outstanding about them either (a CTY camp, small writing camp, SAT studying, etc.).
Do you think this would negatively impact my college app in some way, especially for top schools?