Hi! My son is a Junior in High school, and I was wondering if anyone has advice to offer regarding a few summer programs he has been looking at. These are about 2-6 weeks long, cost about 1.5-3K, at colleges that he is interested in applying to. Do these summer activities add any weight to your application?
No, typically not. It’s one of those things on an application that only say “Look at what my parents can afford!”. Even the adcoms of the school where he would do the program know this.
The ones that are worth your while are the ones where you go through a competitive application process for a free program (like MIT’s MITES- although that’s only for minorities). If your son is looking for research opportunities he’s better off contacting professors of local universities. Many of them enjoy mentoring high school students and giving them experience in a lab (as long as they actually want to be there, and aren’t just doing it to pad their application).
Nevertheless, kids interested in STEM often have fun in those programs. If you can easily afford it then you may consider it for that reason. If not, then you’re better off putting it towards his future tuition.
Thank you very much. I had that feeling, but my son felt i was showing little interest in what (he felt) would help him get in a good school.
Summer programs are a good way to spend a summer before the senior year, just try to find a really good program, not a “pay to play” one. It is almost impossible to find a free program if you are not minority or can show a need base. Here is the list of some good ones http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/summer
Some deadlines already passed.
Check out more summer programs here. As seal16 pointed out, some deadlines have passed.
http://www.tjhsst.edu/studentservices/career-center/summer.html
Thank you so much! You guys are great, thanks for sharing this information.
My son did a 6-week research program the summer after freshman year for which I paid about $4K. (It was local; room and board would have been a lot more.) He got a lot out of the research he did, including learning to write a paper, do a poster presentation, and give a longer PPT presentation. The work he did was used by real people, and he got satisfaction from positive feedback on that. He got 8 units of UC credit, which would cost about $2000 for equivalent classes. I do not yet know whether the will be helpful on his college app, but it was helpful in gaining him an internship this summer (that we aren’t paying for and for which he may be paid sometime before he is done with high school).
I would probably not recommend it for the huge price that they charged out-of-town kids (~$9K), but they did have significant financial aid available so that would be a consideration.