Hi,
My S21 was in COSMOS @ UCI this past Summer. But he is struggling with how he will write about it on applications next year. He and I spoke to an Admissions officer for UCSB at a big college fair in October and the AO acted like we shouldn’t expect it to help his application at all. “COSMOS is for the experience” he said a few times during the conversation. I’m also concerned because we were a full pay family ($4k) and so putting the program on a college app may open us up to being considered “privileged” and not what universities are most interested in recruiting.
Maybe my S should have worked at Mac D over the Summer instead?
My kid just put her summer programs in the Activities list.
My son also put down ‘summer programs’ for the prompt that asked about his experience with the university’s enrichment programs. Most host universities do not (should not) view participation in these enrichment programs as a boost to a student’s college application. Some universities do indeed view working summer jobs more positively than participation in these (bought) experiences.
However, these programs were valuable and worthwhile; the ‘return’ that we can readily identified, was in shaping and strengthening his academic interests and work ethics. Although we will never know whether his multi-year attendance helped his application at the host university, we would send him to these types of programs again and recommend them to others.
@diegodavis: For UC application, these are the guidelines for EC’s
From the UC application guide:
** There are six categories in the Activities and Awards section of the application, each limited to five entries. Choose experiences that have meaning, illustrate interests, and/or demonstrate leadership. These are just a couple of examples of the questions in two of the categories.
• Coursework Other than A-G - Academic courses that do not fit in the “a-g” categories of history/social science, English, math, laboratory science, language other than English (foreign language), and/or visual and performing art should be reported in this section. Examples include leadership courses or religion courses. Do not include non-academic courses, such as PE, office/teacher assistant, etc.
• Educational preparation programs – Programs include but are not limited to: AVID, Upward Bound, and Gear Up. A list of common programs appear in a drop-down menu. If a program is not included, manually enter it.
• Community Service – Consistent participation over time may indicate commitment and dedication.
• Work Experience – Demonstrates time management, responsibility and perhaps leadership.
• Awards & Honors – Awards which are significant in nature – county-wide, state-wide and national - indicate a high level of achievement with significant competition. School-based awards are more meaningful to readers if context is provided, such as “5th place out of 500 students” to earn award, but even “perfect attendance” can be insightful.
• Extra Curricular Activities –Continued participation over time indicates passion, commitment, and sometimes leadership. Enter details about each activity. **
The COSMOS course will probably under Education prep program.
This is great. He is in AVID also, so he can write about that too.
He also took a class at his high school which is not on their a-g list even though it would seem to fit. It was “Intro to Computer Science: Python” (first course of Project Leading the Way at his school). I’m not sure why his high school does not have it on the a-g list but since it isn’t on the list, he will write about it in this section of the application. How it lead to more courses which are on a-g and others outside high school. He won’t be applying to CS majors but it’s still relevant.