<p>Hope… are you really the mother? Just askin’…</p>
<p>math camp? I’d say let him go if you can afford it. He won’t have time for all the gaming and he’ll meet others with the same interests who may be more motivated and involved. It’s great for kids to get out of their own little social circle and see what else is out there. It really might be very worthwhile in a number of ways.</p>
<p>I have to admit I think math camp might well be worth every penny. He’ll meet other kids like him and he may well get excited by the subject. I can’t guarantee he won’t play computer games, that’s a pretty common failing among math and comp sci geeks, but finding other kids like you is really priceless. I’d go for it.</p>
<p>If you can afford it, I would spring for math camp. THat might be the kind of intellectual experience that turns him around.</p>
<p>It is not true that all worthwhile or impressive camps are free. Pursuing interests at CTY, for example, is usually not free, but it is tremendously rewarding and is viewed positively by many admissions people. But the main reason to do CTY or any other camp is not how it will look to admissions people, but what the kid will get out of it.</p>
<p>In college, the difference between graduating and not is motivation. Something is going to have to jumpstart his inner drive. Lacking motivation leads to dropping out after freshman year or becoming a seventh year senior. Perhaps the camp could be the jumpstart he needs. Or maybe he should figure out what he wants to do before he waists a bunch of your money on something he doesn’t even care about. It’s not a bad thing to take some time off between high school and college. It doesn’t hurt your chances of getting in, and it could be vital in figuring out which direction he wants his life to go.</p>
<p>He could be twelve years old.</p>
<p>Yes, I am a mom. I have had a very difficult year. I hope it will be over soon.
I think he found out this thread or his friend told him. I am not sure. I will try to find out and talk to you more.
Thanks for responses!</p>
<p>So hopeforbest, should we address our comments to your son now? I sure hope my daughter doesn’t read my posts!</p>
<p>" disagree about all good programs being free. The free ones are usually ultra competitive, but there are lots of good programs. "</p>
<p>I don’t think that anyone suggested that the good programs are the ones that are free. Some of us – including I - said that the programs that impress the few colleges that factor things like ECs into admission are the free programs like TASP that are highly competitive and are based on factors like scores, grades, and essays.</p>
<p>Expensive summer programs may be excellent, but aren’t likely to open doors to colleges, even to the colleges that have such summer programs. The programs may strengthen skills or motivate students, however, so could be worth the price if that’s what the student or parent is hoping will happen.</p>
<p>Don’t send him to the summer camp. They’re expensive and I really doubt colleges will care too much. A lot of high school kids I know are out doing landscaping work or working a summer job (local bakery, farm etc…). Maybe a summer job will teach him the discipline that he needs to succeed in his studies.</p>
<p>The other day I found a flyer on my door from one of my brother’s middle school friends (7th grade) that he had left to everyone on the street where he offered to mow lawns or do yard work over the summer. The best thing was that free estimates were available! haha</p>
<p>I think a lot of these summer camps/programs are over-rated. Some are rather ridiculous…they charge huge fees which are largely for covering the speaking fees of keynote speakers.</p>
<p>Makes me wonder if some of those “speakers bureaus” are behind organizing some of these to create work for their speakers and to make money for themselves.</p>
<p>Many families are so flattered when they get these invites in the mail, so they willingly send in the checks.</p>
<p>I doubt anyone ever got into a top school because the Adcoms saw that a kid went to one of these.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, there are a lot of different summer programs and you are emphasizing the worst. My kids never attended the worst-- but they didn’t attend the top, exclusive programs either. Over the years, they attended programs in foreign language, engineering, music, theater and sports. They met college professors and made friends around the world. We have few regrets but we didn’t see them as a way to get into college or to impress adcoms. We saw them as a way to stretch themselves and learn more about areas of interest. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think a well-chosen summer program can be an excellent idea for an unmotivated student because it helps them explore interests, refine career ideas and learn in a fun environment. But it’s up to the OP to decide whether or not they want to spend their $ on that. There is no right or wrong answer.</p>
<p>The math camps my son went to were not free, but were top-of-the-line, with competitive admissions, 4-6 week programs with advanced (not standard algebra-trig-calc) math. He went because he loves math, not to impress the schools, but I truly believe they did impress the schools. Of course, these camps, with their competitive admissions, are already full for this summer. </p>
<p>What camp is your son interested in? Maybe some of us know about it and can give more specific suggestions.</p>
<p>It is PROMYS math camp. The cost is $2700 for 6 weeks.</p>
<p>That is a camp with a great reputation, but its application date is already past; in fact, it starts in a week. If they actually still have openings, and your son is motivated to fill out the applications, I’d try very hard to scrape up the money to send him (they also have scholarships). I don’t know if you’ve looked at the application or not, but here it is. <a href=“http://www.promys.org/promys/Application10.pdf[/url]”>http://www.promys.org/promys/Application10.pdf</a> If he has actually been accepted, and you’re now just trying to decide whether to let him go, I’d recommend letting him. </p>
<p>You don’t go to this place to play video games, or if you do you soon regret it. There may be gaming; I don’t know the rules, but there is a LOT of math, and a lot of people who love math, and a lot of people who will want to talk about nothing other than math. This could actually be the thing that turns him on to school because if he seriously wants to go here and fills out the application, he has a lot of interest and motivation in math that has been hiding under a teenager attitude. I <em>firmly</em> believe that this camp would look good to colleges, but not so much for attending as for <em>wanting</em> to attend. By this I mean that the colleges would be interested in someone who would go to the trouble to fill out the application and who would want to spend half his summer immersed in upper level math.</p>
<p>I have no personal experience with this camp, but it is one of the top five or six math camps in the country. My son loved one of its competitors, and loved the “younger sibling” of another.</p>
<p>I will risk being flamed here by saying that I believe that a child who could go to PROMYS **can not **work up to his potential in a regular high school. He could indeed work harder in school and get better grades, but his **potential **is much higher than a regular high school can accommodate. Please PM me if you want more information about highly or profoundly gifted children.</p>
<p>PLEASE send him to math camp. If he’s missed the deadline, do everything you can to see if they have an opening. </p>
<p>Camp is TONS better than lying around playing video games (any camp) – but math camp will put him next to lots of other smart kids who are doing cool things. They will talk and he will listen (more to them than to you). One kid will talk about John Hopkins. Another will talk about CalTech – and they will all talk about MIT. And, more than you can ever do, they will make it clear that they are sharp and they are motivated and that anyone who wants to “hang” with them needs to also be sharp and “doing stuff.”</p>
<p>Boys are hard. They have tremendous capacity to goof off. Again and again parents find that the boys will work harder for others (coach, teacher, camp staff) than they will for themselves or for the parents. MAkes parents nuts – but do EVERYTHING in your power to put him into situations where he learns how to work. </p>
<p>Man, I’d be selling pints of blood and holding garage sales to get a smart son to math camp. </p>
<p>Put yourself into his shoes. The reason he doesn’t do “work up to potential” in regular school is probably because what he is asked to do is 1) stupid and 2)repetitive and 3) not relative to his life and 4) makes him feel like one of the goody two shoe lemmings that crowd the front row and beg for extra points. </p>
<p>But . . .math camp? A chance to be with sharp males and do cool math stuff? A chance to be away from home and be independent (a little)? A chance to strut his stuff? All good and all speaking to his heart. </p>
<p>Read “Genius Denied” about how hard it is to be a smart kid in a regular class. It can be torture. </p>
<p>Send him. Please. I’m begging you. </p>
<p>Sure, you can make him wash cars or serve hamburgers all summer. You can also turn a race horse into cans of dog food. It’s a waste of a race horse, but you can make that choice.</p>
<p>What if he does not do the work there? What if he plays game and sleeps a lot there? At home, I have to spend a lot time to get him up evey day. Every evening, he likes to take a nap, then I have to spend more than half an hour to get him up.</p>
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<p>He won’t. Peer pressure and intellectual /social involvement will have him on his toes. Kids who go to this type of camp–not the bogus “leadership” things that send mailings to half the kids in the country, it seems, that Mom2 is talking about above–LOVE reading Aristotle or Neitzche at the age of 12, or doing advanced math, or whatever their interest is. Secondly, these camps know what to do with adolescents. CTY, anyway, is very well-organized and keeps the kids involved intellectually or socially all day. They do not allow kids to bring gaming devices, or even cell phones. I doubt that PROMYS is any different.</p>
<p>My DD wrote her common app essay about her CTY experience, and why CTY was her life and passion.</p>
<p>My impression when we looked at PROMYS was that it was an excellent program, but because it was aimed at older kids than most of the CTY camps it gave the kids a bit more freedom. That said, PROMYS is a very legitimate program, not the silly “Leadership” things that post #31 is talking about. The kid will be exposed to intense math. (My son ended up deciding he liked comp sci better than math, and so we paid for a summer school course for high school students instead. That was the last summer I had to pay for him, after that he made good money doing computer programming. 
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