<p>Hey I am currently a Community College student looking to transfer, probably around fall 2013. Anyway, I was wondering if there were any summer programs/camps/opportunities/whatever that were available to current college students, particularly in the business/economics field.</p>
<p>I'm trying to have some good stuff to put on my transfer app.
thanks so much guys!</p>
<p>Look on the websites of the schools you might want to transfer to. It’s a little late now to plan for this summer, especially for any program that requires an application process. But you could pay to take a course at a school you want to transfer to, since that would show you could handle the level of their classes.</p>
<p>You could pick up an unpaid internship at a local company. Start your own seasonal business. Heck, I read an article somewhere that talked about how a student who worked at a fast food place impressed the business school because he had hands-on experience starting at the bottom and was able to apply that to the high-falutin ideas tossed around in class.</p>
<p>If you can’t find anything else, consider phoning up your local Chamber of Commerce and just volunteer in their office for a summer. It might just be phone and filing work, but if they ask why you want to, tell them you’re coming with some questions in your own mind. </p>
<p>Here’s an example of “questions in mind”: try to learn more about the current problems facing small, independent businesses, all across the USA. How do they cope with taxes, civic expectations, competition from big box megamalls, and so on. What kinds of alliances do they make at a local level to help themselves survive or at least enjoy life a bit? It’s a kind of “Main St. v. Wall St.” summer. I’m suggesting you make your own little research project, raise your own questions, ask people you meet about these issues, and journal their answers and your thoughts on it. Also in the evenings, surf the web for articles discussing those issues. </p>
<p>Keep the journal about it at home, and try not to make a big fuss about your personal project as you do your daily work. </p>
<p>If you want to offer them a useful service, volunteer to improve the look of their website. Most C of C (or tourism department) local websites are terrible. If they realize they need more social media presence – such as announcing local events/charity events etc on Facebook – offer to launch that for them. If you can find someone who’ll take you along to an evening meeting at Kiwanis or other business/civic associations, or help their charity event, that’s good learning, too.</p>
<p>Learn as much as you can with eyes-wide-open, mouth-closed. Then you can write a cool transfer app essay.</p>
<p>Contact any local nonprofit organization that has a mission you are committed to and offer to work for them this summer. Bonus points if you have computer skills because many of them underutilize technology, social media, have outdated and inadequate web sites, etc… Working for a smaller nonprofit is a great way to get exposure to business - finance, marketing, strategy, human resources, program mgt. - and the meaning of entrepreneurship. You can learn a great deal, contribute, get some decent references if you work hard, and if you are lucky, discover a life-long passion.</p>
<p>thank you everyone!</p>
<p>In regards to theGFG’s post…can you usually sign up for a summer course at a school you haven’t been accepted to?</p>
<p>anyone haha ?</p>
<p>Many places will allow you to enroll for one summer course.</p>
<p>But frankly, since you are a business major, why aren’t you looking for a job for the summer? There are useful business concepts and workplace skills to be acquired in whatever job you land in.</p>
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<p>This is unusual? Was this UPenn or MIT?</p>
<p>My son looked for over a year for a paid job and didn’t find one because he was under 18 and still in high school. No one wanted to deal with the work permits required for a minor. Now he has an internship at a non-profit business incubator this summer. He just walked in and asked if they needed a volunteer, and handed them his resume. He has extensive web design credentials. They had space for a media intern. He’s learning how to promote them on media sites and on facebook, plus he gets free into a six-week work shop this summer on starting a business. He wanted small business classes and would have been willing to pay for them…and here they are, free. They want him as an instructor in the classes for Word Press also, so he’ll have resume credit as an instructor at the incubator,as well as a “media internship”.
Wait, it gets better. The incubator sits above an event center. The center asked him if he’d be willing to help plan and publicize events, another unpaid internship. The perks are lots of free food and free entry to all of the bands and other events. And a second internship for his resume, “event planning”. He considers himself quite well “paid” for his intern work.</p>
<p>Morgana199. - what a great story & a great opportunity! I especially love the part about your S taking the initiative to think out of the box and then have his resume handy. You must be proud!</p>
<p>For a business major, I agree that some kind of internship or work experience is best.
However, many large universities allow “visiting” students to enroll in summer classes. Contact the university in question -or just read the website carefully - for their exact rules. Sometimes, even if the class is technically full, it’s worth showing up for the first few classes because students sign up for summer classes and then change their minds (or don’t flunk the spring class after all…)
Get a stellar grade and it will help your transfer application. (and vice versa)</p>
<p>to what extent would a stellar grade help? drastically lol?</p>
<p>An A in a summer class at college x would give you a bit of a boost for a later transfer to college x. A cool internship would give you a boost at any college and would help you with later internships and jobs.</p>
<p>thank you so much! I’m going to look into doing both :)</p>
<p>Thanks for saying that.
Proud, yes, but the truth is that this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and as much as I’d like to smile and nod agreement, that’s a myth that I believe is ultimately damaging to the kids/young adults. I think that if you’ll look at all of the hundreds of successful students (a college of their choice balanced by practical dreams and hard work) you’d find that they were always supported by a team.
My son had parents and his school administrator (charter home school) supporting his efforts. I nudged him to sign up for 2 semesters of “career planning” in high school. He loves to work for a grade. And in his program, career planning is whatever you can accomplish. No rules, no limits. For him, with suggestions and input from others, it was resumes, job interviews, HTML professional certificate, college web design classes and finally internships. No one is born knowing how to do this. For him, it was a year-long process. I pointed out that the business incubator was there, and a non-profit, and showed him their website. The rest was him charting the course using the skills he had learned over the school year.
The thing that most pleased me was that he learned what I call “process”. Any goal can be accomplished if the steps to get there are broken down into small, logical steps. Those steps are “process”. I’ve noticed that adults who struggle through life lack a good grasp of “process”, they believe that they should just be able to bootstrap their way to their goal. That any failure is their personal failure because they weren’t capable enough. I suspect that they lacked mentors and would thrive if they could find mentors and build a team to support them.</p>
<p>Jebeezie,
Here’s some hard core advice from a home school Mom in a small one-stop-light town. Opportunity is what you make of it. You can study for free this summer from the comfort of your bedroom and earn a certificate from MIT or Stanford’s online course or any of the other proliferating fee online courses. Or learn WordPress, again, free online (hint: people pay for WordPress tutoring, the demand is outstanding- advertise on Craigslist, $25/hr.).
Or, you can set up shop in your local library and give free resume writing workshops. You can set up a business selling people’s stuff on Ebay for a commission. These are all easy and give you lots of free time. They also impress the heck out of admissions counselors because they show initiative.
ANY business that you create will impress them. A summer vacation pet/house sitting business (and do join the Chamber of Commerce, most have Jr. memberships for free or low cost). Tutoring. Make an internship at the County Fairgrounds organizing sponsors, they’ll welcome you with open arms and as you go around to the various businesses you’ll have the opportunity to learn a lot from very savvy people. You can also make connections with these businesses for employment in the future.
Whatever you do, write a additional application essay about it. Make certain that your enthusiasm for business and your initiative shine through. I already love your attitude. I think that they will, too.</p>