<p>Amigos de las Americas
<a href="http://www.amigoslink.org">www.amigoslink.org</a></p>
<p>Summer volunteer oppertunity in 3rd world latin american countries.. great chance to refine spanish skills... health related community projects... live with a host family. 4-8 week projects.. highly recommended!</p>
<p>My son attended U. of Maryland's Young Scholars Program (YSP) last year and loved it. He entered their program as an undecided student, took their Introduction to Engineering class, and now is dead set on becoming an engineer. They also have a great Architecture class, which does a field trip to Camden Yards in Baltimore. My son is now a Junior and is looking for different program for this Summer. He has applied to MIT's MITE@S program and Carnegie-Mellon's Summer Program for Diversity. Both applications are pending. Does anyone have any other suggestions for a pre-engineer student. He is interested in either an academic engineering or computer sceince program. Cooper Union sounded great, but we don't live in NYC. We are looking at Rose-Hulman's Catapult, Case Western/Northwestern's Equinox and Vanderbilt's PAVE, but don't know that much about them. Please comment if anyone has feedback on these. The SSP program metioned earlier in this thread sound very interesting. Please provide suggestions, cost is a factor, so we have counted out Cornell, Brown, Penn, and JHU. </p>
<p>For everyone out there here are some links:</p>
<p>Brown
<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Continuing_Studies/%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Continuing_Studies/</a></p>
<p>CarnegieMellon
<a href="http://www.cmu.edu/enrollment/summerprogramsfordiversity/%5B/url%5D">http://www.cmu.edu/enrollment/summerprogramsfordiversity/</a></p>
<p>Case Western Reserve
<a href="http://equinox.case.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://equinox.case.edu/</a></p>
<p>U. of Colorado & Penn State
<a href="http://www.summerstudy.com/index.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.summerstudy.com/index.cfm</a></p>
<p>Cornell
<a href="http://www.sce.cornell.edu/sc/explorations/engr.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.sce.cornell.edu/sc/explorations/engr.php</a></p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
<a href="http://www.jhu.edu/summer/%5B/url%5D">http://www.jhu.edu/summer/</a></p>
<p>U. of Maryland
<a href="http://www.summer.umd.edu/c/ysp/%5B/url%5D">http://www.summer.umd.edu/c/ysp/</a></p>
<p>Northwestern
<a href="http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/summer/%5B/url%5D">http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/summer/</a></p>
<p>U. of Penn
<a href="http://www.sas.upenn.edu/CGS/summer/index.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.sas.upenn.edu/CGS/summer/index.php</a></p>
<p>Rose-Hulman
<a href="http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult/%5B/url%5D">http://www.rose-hulman.edu/catapult/</a></p>
<p>Syracuse
<a href="http://summercollege.syr.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://summercollege.syr.edu/</a></p>
<p>Try Interlochen Arts Camp in Northern Michigan. They have a creative writing program, and the age group of the camp ranges from 8 - 18 yrs old. I'm actually a student, but I thought I should let you know about it. I don;t know how intense the program is for younger students, but many of my friends (ages 13-15) who were in it absolutely loved their classes. Interlochen also just built a brand new beautiful Creative Writing facility as well.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.interlochen.org%5B/url%5D">www.interlochen.org</a></p>
<p>I'm attending the Phillips Academy (Andover) Summer Session in two months!</p>
<p>Skidmore College has an excellent summer program. EIGHT college credits in fascinating depts. with actual faculty from the College AND upstate New York.</p>
<p>Well, whatever floats your boat, no?</p>
<p>BU summer programs have been mentioned several times already, but... </p>
<p>I did the general High School Honors program at BU; I took PHIL 101 Intro to Philosophy & SOC 211 (or something like that) Social Psychology. The High School Honors program is run by Scott Alessandro; this program is the one run with the research/intern program & the two week theme-exploration program as well. I remember playing Murder with the nerdie PROMYS kids and flirting with the Theatre kids, and getting Ben & Jerrys with the two-weekers... good times.</p>
<p>Anyways, I had money issues up the wazoo, and choose BU 1. it's Boston and 2. because they gave me a nice scholarship based on fin need. And summer programs, as we all might not know, don't always cater to fin need. I had issues with general college class for high schoolers programs at Cornell, Georgetown, Stanford, UMd, etc. because they don't do the fin aid. But BU and UDelaware do try to meet aid, and the director at BU has a heart and a soul. :-D</p>
<p>Our D wanted to study French in France, but we found the prices of programs, particularly her school's program, to be prohibitive. After my husband made the off-handed comment that he bet the English weren't spending any 6K to send their children to France for 4 weeks, D had a brainstorm and typed "France summer PROGRAMME," later adding the words "teenage" or "teenaged" into google, and voila! As it turns out, European students have wonderful language programs with dormitory or homestay options and wonderful excursions for considerably less than half the cost. D ended up studying in Nice with teenagers from Europe and Asia, made friends from all over, and didn't break the bank. We had to make our own travel arrangements, but the "programme" shuttled her to and from the airport, and we rented her a cell phone that worked in Europe so we could be in touch with her (She didn't need this, but it made us more comfortable.) when she had layovers in Zurich and Paris.</p>
<p>This sounds like exactly what my daughter did, except she went to Spain instead of France. NRCSA will link to a number of immersion programs for teens in different countries and for various languages.</p>
<p>My older child did a Duke TIP program and spent several summers at Concordia, which she liked a lot. Both of these were positive experiences for her.</p>
<p>My younger child stayed home and worked each of the last few summers. She worked as a counselor's aid, for free basically. However that experience has qualified her to now have paid counselor jobs, and she has references and work experience that can potentially help her get other kinds of employment.</p>
<p>My older child has had trouble compiling a reference list since she has actually been looking for real work and internships.</p>
<p>Personally I think the experience my younger child gained is not any worse for her, in the long run, and may actually be better. As an added plus it did not cost us any money.</p>
<p>Does anyone else feel that there are so many great summer programs that it would be nice if high school were 10 years long to take advantage of everything before reality and work get in the way? :)</p>
<p>American Chemical Society Project seed Program for minoritites.</p>
<p>During the summer, students work in the laboratory doing hands-on research guided by a scientist-mentor. Project SEED is for the student from an economically disadvantaged background with an annual family income below $32,000 or does not exceed 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines for family size. Exceptions can be made for incomes of up to $44,000, depending on family size and circumstances.</p>
<p>Students who have not graduated from high school are eligible for the Summer I program, and those returning for a second summer of research may participate in the Summer II program.</p>
<p>College scholarships (for a first-year nonrenewable) are available for SEED students who have graduated from high school and plan to attend college The scholarships are restricted to students who will major in a chemical science field such as chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry, or materials science. The scholarships are intended to assist former SEED participants in their transition from high school to college.</p>
<p>Stipends & Duration of Program - Summer I students should receive a minimum of $2,275 and Summer II students a minimum of $2,600. Both programs expect at least eight weeks of participation at approximately 40 hours per week.</p>
<p>Hi, just got back from vacation, and two of my girls just finished their sessions at the Concordia language camps (German camp). The older girl (15 yr. old), who went last summer as well, did the four week high school credit session this time and absolutely loved it. She is more convinced than ever that she wants to spend a year in Germany before college and hopes that she can go back one summer and be a counselor. The younger one (11 yrs old) took the two week session and had such a good time she wants to go back next year. I was able to drop the kids off at camp this time and pick them up, and took a tour of several of the languages villages clustered around the lake in Bemidji, MN on International Day, and so got much more of a sense of what they do, and was very impressed. There are thirteen language villages currently and they are adding Arabic next year. The kids learn a foreign language by playing, singing goofy songs, doing skits, all the fun camp things. It really doesn't seem very academic at all and yet they learn so much, and have such a good time. Well, almost all of them do. I have to add that the eleven year old convinced her friend to go with her, and her friend decided it was "OK." The friend was terribly homesick the first week, and found the experience of the counselors speaking German to her all the time to be annoying and stressful (guess she didn't quite understand what she was getting into!).</p>
<p>Anyway, just thought I'd post the very positive experiences my girls had in this program. I'd be interested in hearing feedback on how others' kids are doing with whatever summer programs they ended up in. Have to add that northern Minnesota, (in spite of the heat and the mosquitoes) is beautiful this time of year.</p>
<p>My daughter is leaving in two weeks for the 4 week program at Mori No Ike, the Japanese village. She went last year for 2 weeks and can hardly wait to get back. I was a little worried that the 4 week program might be too intense so was glad to read your news about the German 4 weeks! Sounds pretty much like an extension of the two week one she went to last year.</p>
<p>Can you ask your girls if you think a boy who will be 16 next summer, i.e. a rising junior at that point, would enjoy this? I know sometimes when kids are on the older side of the peer group it can be less than fun. Thank you in advance!</p>
<p>Well, the high school credit program is more structured, and requires doing some written projects (at least for the German one, don't know about the Japanese one!), but I wouldn't worry. My daughter's only German experience was the two weeks of German she learned at camp last year and she did great. She said she couldn't write complete sentences when doing her first project. but was writing paragraphs by the end of the four weeks and said she could understand almost everything the Dean was saying in German by the end of the four weeks (amazing to me!).</p>
<p>How about the social aspect? Do you know how they set this up so that older teens can still feel "cool" hang out etc? I think it must always be necessary when older teens go to camps, no? The only residential experience of camps we have had was my Ds ballet intensives, and they did ballet all day long :O. So hanging out meant lying in your dorm room in bed talking to the other girls before you all passed out...</p>
<p>Alumother, I'll ask my daughter when I get a chance. There were 11 kids doing the high school credit program at her German camp this year, and some were boys, (one was an Asian boy), but I don't know how old they were. Last year there were only five (six?) doing the high school credit session, so it obviously can vary from year to year. The camp she went to is one of the smaller camps, the German camp in Vergas with between forty five and sixty or so campers each session. Some of the camps are quite a bit bigger. One thing that would seem to me to make it enjoyable for the (older) high school kids is the large number of counselors. There were probably 10 counselors and about 45 kids at this session of her camp, including several very energetic (and young looking) male counselors, and there is a lot of interaction between the counselors and the kids. The counselors don't tell the kids how old they are. They all say they are "35 years old." I think they range in age from late teens into 20's and 30's. There were two counselors, a male and a female, in charge of the high school credit program at my daughter's camp, and they were supervised by another (older man), the Dean of the camp. I would call and ask about the particular camp you are interested in. As I said, they range in size, and that is something to consider. There were definitely some older kids doing the camps, and some younger ones, though the majority of kids are probably in that 12 to 15 year old age range, I would guess, just from what I observed. At International Day, they recognized the campers that have come back for more than five years. One camper, a boy from one of the Spanish camps was back for his 10th summer! It reminds me a little bit of our summer swim team, which has kids ranging from age four to 18 all on the same team. Somehow, they all seem to be having a grand time of it, and I personally love the way the different age groups have a chance to interact with each other in these types of settings.</p>
<p>I'll call for next summer. It's the Chinese camp we'd be interested in, and their high school session is already full for this year. Sounds like a real possibility. I don't suppose the kids play any soccer, do they?.</p>
<p>There was a soccer game going on at International Day. I imagine soccer is a big part of some of the camps, but don't know about the Chinese camp? Is soccer big in China? </p>
<p>A couple of the camps that I thought looked very cool (if I were young and could go. . .) were the French Voyageur camp and the Spanish camp from Calloway. The French Voyageurs spend a couple of weeks canoing around and camping on the lake. They were a small group and looked like a fun group, definitely a bit on the older side, compared to some of the camps. The Spanish camp got up at International Day and presented a very racy latin dance with a black kid doing kind of a hip-hop thing to the latin music in the middle of it all. It was quite a contrast to the goofy songs and skits some of the other camps presented. One mother that I was sitting next to said her daughter was at that camp, and they had had a talk about "boys" before she went, and her daughter assured her that only "nerds" went to language camps. We both agreed that these boys dancing with the girls did not seem like nerds to us! Another younger girl who was also sitting by us complained that at the Swedish camp all they did was some pretty tame "folkdancing."</p>
<p>My son is at Mori no Ike. He gets back Saturday. From the little I've heard from him, he's having a wonderful time. He tends to put things in the negative but the worst is the mosquitoes, he said. I learned about this program on this site and am so grateful. Off this site, I've met a mom whose son went 6 years then returned 2 years as an employee. He said it was the best times of his life.</p>
<p>For those wanting a short program - My 17-year-old just returned most satisfied from a week-long conference for rising Seniors that combined morning lectures on economics with afternoon leadership activities. It is put on by the Foundation for Teaching Economics, sponsored by the Gillette Company. Best of all, total cost, including food, housing and supplies, is only $100. He thought most of the 30 attendees at his session, from various states, were interesting and intelligent, especially one boy who was already earning decent money from his own computer consulting company.</p>