<p>Ok so all summer I've been trying to find a job and nothing has really worked out. The only thing I found was a job at a mini market 30 minutes away from home, which sucks since I don't drive. Then I tried to volunteer at a hospital or something but they said they already had "enough" volunteers.
A few days ago I got an internship at a publishing office, where I helped out translating arabic children's books to english.
The thing is this internship thing only lasts for another 3 weeks.
Will it look bad on my application that I havent "filled up a summer"? especially since I'm planning on applying to HYPS.
I'm entering Junior Year this fall and my EC's are far from perfect. (I'm still not head of a club or anything...although I do have some time ahead of me.)
Anyway, How much will a waste of a summer hurt my application?</p>
<p>It depends on what schools you apply to, but generally your summers are not that big a consideration. For Stanford at least, there’s only one short-short essay on it (they don’t expect you to use a complete sentence on this and it’s typically 2 lines or less).</p>
<p>That’s a good internship. Sure, it doesn’t “fill” your summer, but why not have some intellectual pursuit for the summer? Perhaps exploring a subject you have an interest in? Doing a hobby of yours? Just try to do something meaningful with your time. This doesn’t mean you can’t relax, as you should during the summer, but at the same time, you can accomplish something, even if it’s on a personal basis. That should be good enough for colleges.</p>
<p>Colleges expect you to need breaks especially if you are taking very rigorous course loads during the academic year. Even though the internship (which sounds pretty interesting) is “only…another 3 weeks” it does show that you were at least proactive in doing SOMETHING even if it doesn’t “fill” your summer. Many college summer programs are only about 3 weeks long. Between Junior and Senior years I did this program at Caltech for three weeks and went to a competition for a couple of days out of state earlier in the summer and I considered that “full.” But you can always do something more enriching during the time you don’t have an internship or the like as kyledavid said^</p>
<p>I think your internship sounds interesting, particularly as it demonstrates a unique language fluency.</p>
<p>But at Ivies, won’t I face competiton from people who’ve spent 3 months, rather than 3 weeks, working on some major projects?</p>
<p>Yasmin- I get your concern, but I have to doubt that there are that many people doing that right now, so I think it won’t be the end all to your app =)</p>