<p>How much weight do colleges really put on what you do over the summer? </p>
<p>I have to devote my entire summer to summer school (to finish up credits), and most likely can't do anything else, it really sucks. If I'm strong in every other part of my application (stats, ECs, teacher recommendations, essays), would a selective college actually reject me just for not doing anything but summer school over the summer?</p>
<p>^^I dont think so…doing something nice over the summer looks impressive of course,but doing nothing over the summer is not really going to hurt. doing nothing over the summer at least is better than doing nothing over the school year.(i mean your EC)</p>
<p>Doing something over the summer is always a nice icing to put on your app, but it won’t make or break you… unless your out there curing cancer or something ^_~.</p>
<p>no. Colleges won’t think you slacked off for not having a great activity, but it is a good time to do things that you wouldn’t have time to do during the year, so make sure you have solid ecs and you’ll be ok. the common just has space for a list of your 6(?) most significant ecs and you may also choose to attach a brag sheet (more detailed list of activities along with descriptions) as well. They won’t care when you did your ecs, just the quality of them.
For one school i applied to, an essay question was what did you do over the last two summers. For that you would write about the classes you took and show your academic interests. That doesn’t sound like you slacked off and watched tv all day to me</p>