<p>I am planning on going to summer programs through Northwestern U next summer and possibly the summer after that. I am interested in the civil leadership program, where you live in downtown Chicago and travel all over the city learning about the people.</p>
<p>Additionally, I am going to a journalism workshop run by the high school press association this summer at Michigan state, and I plan on doing it the next two summers as well. This summer I am going to either do an intense journalistic writing experience or a workshop on opinion in newspaper. I am an editor for my schools paper.</p>
<p>How would these look on college applications? Along with this during the summer, I also volunteer through my librart-started this summer-and next summer I am going to caddy at a nearby country club.</p>
<p>If I want to go to Northwestern, would this be a significant thing that would give me an advantage against others with similar grades and test scores?</p>
<p>At top schools, only if the program is free (or you got a scholarship) and competitive to gain acceptance to. At less competitive colleges it’s more of a plus even if your parents paid.</p>
<p>Also, to be accepted you have to have qualifying ACT scores from 8th grade, write an essay, get teacher recs, etc. It is by no means an easy thing to be accepted but I think I have a great shot.
My parents would pay, yes.</p>
<p>If it’s a useful experience, then fine. But it’s not more worthy than caddying at the country club per se. The reason is they are very commonplace – your profile won’t be superior to your classmate who works in her dad’s party store all summer.</p>
<p>If your family is good for the money, the NWU program sounds interesting. But don’t bank on it to make your application shine – it won’t. Do it if the work and location really interest you.</p>
<p>CLI is reasonably well respected. I am part of the school of thought that believes that talent search summer programs are looked at more fondly than other summer programs. IMO, talent search prestige ranks go THINK, CTY, Duke TIP, CTD, RMTS, CAA.</p>
<p>the northwestern one is through the center for talent developement. after i recieved my act scores from 8th grade I also got a booklet of all of the classes they offer. So, yes I think it is a talent search program</p>
<p>I went to CLI after my freshman year, and while I’m not sure how much the program itself helped my application, it definitely helped me realize a lot about myself and was a starting point for a few of my college essays. So if your family can afford it, I would definitely say yes. :)</p>
<p>One note: Many colleges rent out summer space to for-profit groups to run some of these “summer sessions” but really don’t exert anything into it. For example, there’s some leadership one week session held at Yale. Yale gets paid by some company and the deluded kids think they’re one step closer to looking appealing to Yale and like colleges. Not so.</p>
<p>I’m not saying all these “portable” programs are junk. Just be wary that the mere presence at a prestigious college doesn’t guarantee any TRUE affiliation with the host college. Get informed.</p>
<p>I dont know how involved it is with Northwestern bUt i can def look into that as i wont be applying until winter/spring
and ive heard that yale summer programs suck.</p>
<p>A lot of summer programs are scams, esp. the independently run ones. So be careful.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t think they will help, especially the ones where you pay thousands of dollars for going. The work you do there might help build your portfolio (if you need one), and if you get a letter of recommendation from your summer program professor, that might help you a tiny bit.</p>
<p>"if you get a letter of recommendation from your summer program professor, that might help you a tiny bit. "</p>
<p>I hate to be overly cynical here but shall we guess how many of that prof’s summer session participants aren’t going to ask for a letter of recommendation? That instructor probably has a MSWord mail merge document where he/she just uploads the class list and churns out 35 letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>T26E4 has a very good point that many students overlook.</p>
<p>In a summer research program I participated in a while back, I found out that my professor gave boilerplate recommendations after comparing my rec with identical ones of my roomates’.</p>
<p>My daughter just came back from a program at Brown. In my opinion, it was absolutely great for what we hoped it would do for her.</p>
<p>We weren’t hoping it would give her an edge in college admissions. We were hoping it would help her find a good fit in a college.</p>
<p>We were hoping it would give her a feeling for what it is like to adjust to college far from home; a stronger sense of what she likes and dislikes in a school; a period of independence; and a chance to do academic work in some of the areas she’s thinking about pursuing. It did all of this. </p>
<p>If you think your college decision-making would benefit from a pre-college experience, then go for it.</p>
<p>(BTW, the programs at Brown are administered by the university, not an outside agency.)</p>
<p>I would go more because of how the program interests me. Spending 3 weeks in downtown Chicago and seeing basically the whole city is a perfect fit for me.</p>