I’m a junior who got accepted to the breakthrough teaching fellowship in silicon valley for this summer. My parents wanted me to find out about its impact on college apps- I absolutely love teaching and I know I will enjoy this program but am NOT an education major nor am I interested in becoming a teacher at this moment. Will this fellowship add any value to my college apps- I just want to know because I have 50+ hr work weeks so it needs to add some value for more than 400 hours of my time for very little pay. If I’m interested in majoring in economics, would it be much better to try to get a research internship at a college in the summer or would this still be okay?
Also, can anyone tell me about their experience working in the breakthrough fellowship (in San Jose/ Silicon Valley)?
You don’t have to be an education major to be committed to becoming a skilled teacher. Those abilities will apply to just about every job you get - even in economics. And, if you land in grad school one day, you will be glad to have a decent toolbox of teaching skills to draw on when you find yourself in charge of a section of Econ 101.
Why did you apply for this fellowship?
What kind of job do you have now that is giving you 50+ hour workweeks?
How much money do you need to make this summer?
I applied because I enjoy teaching others and I want to help others 
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Its a fellowship with a combination of teaching and mentoring and the hours are 7am-5pm each weekday for the entire summer. You work with low-income students and teach classes of approx 15-students middle schoolers to help them get a head start into the school year. While I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, I was worried that I would not have time for college applications so I wanted to make sure it would have some positive impact on college at least for the time I’m spending. It would be hard to spend this much time on teaching if colleges want to see a summer activity related my major.
Money is not the main problem, though the stipend is quite low (works out to be about $5 an hour).
Same question here for dear daughter who was offered the same position (but in another city) The time commitment is outrageously high (50 hours/wk for 9 straight weeks, plus some evenings and possibly a weekend or two), and comes at an enormous opportunity cost for the entire family, interferes with college visits and the ability to study for SAT 2 tests, requires DD to commute or be driven nearly an hour in each direction, thus burning a ton of fuel and clocking crazy miles on the vehicle, and causes me to fork over money to cover her other obligations.
She doesn’t need the extra community service hours, and has zero plans to become a teacher or get an education major. So it’s actually a great question–will any highly selective college care at all about this?
@PrepSchoolHope That is exactly my situation. While I haven’t had much luck in collegeconfidential about the program’s impact on college applications, the 3 students from my school who did it only had good things to say about it. Two of those students went to UC Berkeley, the other went to UChicago, all great schools but I’m not sure if this is just coincidental. But with that time commitment + the one hour commute…
Does anyone know if this program is well-known and if it will help your college applications?
If you need to commute an hour each way, it seems to me that there should be other activities that would have shorter commutes and be equally or more interesting to you.
Don’t do anything solely (or even primarily) for the application boost. Do whatever it is because you truly are interested.
I’m not doing this for this solely for college applications, and I know that the commute is long. I was just looking to understand how well-regarded this program is so I can make my decision?
If you were to find out tomorrow that this program was considered to be the equivalent of being a senior counselor at a summer-long girl or boy scout camp, what would your decision be?
I would be on-edge. If it the location (it is TBD) is close enough, I’d say yes, but would not commute too far for it.