<p>I'm trying to figure out the value, if any, in participation in university summer programs. I know that it can be valuable to the student to be able to live on campus at a school in which he is interested. And I assume that the students learn something.</p>
<p>But is there any value in the admissions process? If you are selected to participate in a program at school X, is school X more likely to admit you? If you participate in the program at school X, does school Y care at all? Or would it be better for the student to just have a summer job?</p>
<p>When it comes to places like Harvard, Stanford and similar colleges that have expensive summer programs, the answer is "no." They are nice moneymakers for the college, but don't confer an admissions advantage.</p>
<p>My son bypassed those expensive summer programs and took regular college classes as a summer school student with other college-aged kids. He is applying to the UC's mainly so that is where he took classes, one each summer. It probably will not help with admissions, but if the main goal of admissions is to ascertain if the kid can do college level work then I suppose that question can be answered by evaluating his grades in those classes. He took them because he is bored to tears in high school and I wanted him to experience the pace of college classes so he would look forward to his college years and to get an idea of what major he might like to pursue. At one school, the difference in cost for taking a class solo like he did and participating in their high school student summer program was about two thousand dollars.</p>
<p>Stuff like that is only beneficial if it fits into one of your passions. For instance, it is somewhat helpful if you spent two weeks at a writing camp at a university over a summer if you want to be an author and you have done a slew of other stuff related to that same passion. Or, if you want to be a doctor and you attended a medical scholars camp for two or three weeks. </p>
<p>It is not all that helpful, one way or the other, however, if you did some supposedly "gifted" program that your parents spent $3000 on. Altough the expereince was probably fun or even educational, it really wouldn't tip the decision process either way. </p>
<p>Some colleges do look at how you spend your free time, however. Do you spend it at the local mall or do you spend it on worthy pursuits?</p>
<p>sorry to throw this a bit off track, but is participating in the NIH summer internship impressive? they only have a 20% acceptance rate, and that includes grad, phd, and undergrad students along with the highschoolers. </p>
<p>Well, examples of very prestegious summer programs that would help in admissions would probably be TASP and RSI. Generally, the activities that would help are the ones that are competitive to get into, and also, as pearl said, fit into one of your passions. </p>
<p>always remember, it is correlation, not causation.</p>
<p>My son spent 2 summers at Brown, studying subjects he was interested in. He also attended NJ Governor's School at Drew University for 4 weeks and he did a year at Columbia University's Science Honors Program for HS students. While I don't think these programs got him accepted, I think his experiences allowed him to discover what he liked/disliked about college environments (size, location, facilities, etc) and subject matter. He didn't take these classes to impress anyone. He also took classes at a local college all through middle school simply because he was interested. He preferred taking "enrichment" classes vs. college courses for credit because he simply wanted to learn and had no interest in getting ahead. For Brown especially, his experiences helped show his passion for learning and helped him describe WHY he wanted to attend Brown. In March or so, he remembered he had references from his professors at Brown so he sent one in to most of his schools.</p>