<p>I live in Virginia, and this summer I was going to spend a month at a summer residential governor's school... however, much to my dismay, somebody else from my school beat me out to it. Now I am going to a two week program at my community college but I was looking for something else to accompany it. I stumbled upon the Blueprint programs and I applied for a scholarship, because money is a limiting factor with some summer programs.</p>
<p>I won $500, and now I don't know if I should go or not. Do many people win this? Has anyone else had a good experience from this program? Does it really look good to colleges (William and Mary, UVA, Georgetown)? And if it helps I plan to major in pol. science and I have a love for humanities.</p>
<p>I think Blueprint is a pretty reputable company.</p>
<p>Is a 1 week program really worth the $700 + airfare that it would take to pay for this? My biggest question is do colleges really value this highly?</p>
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<p>I don’t think that should really matter. The question should instead be, “Will this help me grow/develop personally and educationally enough to be worth US$700?”.</p>
<p>To answer your original question, no, summer programs are always names on paper. What does matter is not how “prestigious” a program is, but what you get out of it. If they ask what you did over the summer and you say “RSI but it was really lame” (not that such a thing would ever happen), it would not be as good as “Blueprint, and it was awesome because I learned this and that, and I made connections, and I grew emotionally” and so on.</p>