<p>I used to be a college counselor at a fancy prep school, and one of my "areas of expertise" was summer programs. Yet as often as I explained the relative merits of Cambridge and Paris, I never really grasped the bald luxury of these outfits until I saw the Semester at Sea ship awaiting her student passengers, many of whom had spent the night before in the expensive Atlantis resort, awaiting a journey on which they could do anything from suntan around the pool to attend lectures by Desmond Tutu. Now, that's edu-tainment, at roughly $11,500 to $16,000 for the summer, depending on how swank a cabin Junior gets.</p>
<p>In the last decade, however, the summer in Paris or on the open seas has lost its glimmer for many of our most ambitious high school students, who now prefer combining international travel with community service experiences in desperately poor countries. The elite college-bound teen now wants—with the zeal of the convert and the focused intensity of a safe cracker—to "give back." Never, ever get between a Yale applicant and his or her chance to give back. You will be mowed down in an instant.</p>
<p>....</p>
<p>But, as ever, when it comes to college warriors and their exploits, the situation is more complex than it first appears. Admissions officers at elite colleges see these trips for exactly what they are: worthwhile endeavors undertaken by well-intentioned kids, but no different from a Grand Tour of Europe—just the current fashion for wealthy youngsters, who are supervised and pampered at every step.</p>
<p>Cute. A friend of ours (Ivy grad) called his Ds junior summer not in North America volunteer cum resume building trip “a very expensive way to learn how to surf” which apparently she did learn that summer.</p>
<p>Oh being the continual cynic that i am, this is only the more obvious and visible of the wealthy and connected padding their college resume. I read over and over and over again, often in the New York Times, about these AMAZING teenagers…who do seem to do incredible things. Yet it is ALWAYS for their lifelong passion (what me? I wasn’t even thinking about college apps!), and a quick search and you see it required huge amount of parental financial investment, parental behind the scenes help, and ‘friends’ to help out providing all the things that far less connected teens could never attain. Heck, you can even take it to science fairs…invariably kids working under well known professors and teams…accomplishing the impossible except for the very heavy hand of a PhD or more. And it all seems incredibly suspect and biased. </p>
<p>Simply what will and can be gamed to get into a top college, will be. It’s a tough one for adcoms to tease apart who is the kid and who is the kid who appears amazing due to an insane amount of financial and other support. So not an even playing field and it never will be. Tiresome.</p>
<p>One of my kids did one of these trips and it was a life changing experience - I think it was the summer between 10 and 11. The kids were supposed to raise their own expense money - mine didn’t and it cost me about 4K.</p>
<p>My boss’s ex-wife signed his rising senior up for almost $20,000 worth of rich-kid activities this summer. Since the kid has zero community service, zero ECs and only a 3.3 GPA to go with his 2200 SATS, my boss is heartbroken that this will reinforce the rest of the application’s impression of a lazy, slacker rich kid. I think he’s probably right.</p>
<p>I have heard admissions officers talk about essays about these trips and how predictable they are. One officer commented about how applicants write about how they were nervous at first, and then ended up liking the people they meet in the end. Shocker! Did we expect them to end up hating everyone?</p>
<p>My kid is going on one of these trips, but not for the purpose of padding a college resume. It really is no different from sending your kid to an expensive summer camp in the mountains, but the setting is more exotic. They will be helping young kids learn English a couple of hours per day, which earns them CS hours, and that is a plus, because our high school requires 40 CS hours in order to graduate. I am excited for this experience, but I don’t expect it to help him get into college. If it does turn out to feel “life-changing” for him, I don’t see why he shouldn’t write about it, and I probably won’t stop him if that is what he wants to do, even if it makes some cynics mad.</p>
<p>^ I think the pretense of it being for altruistic reasons is the issue. Nothing wrong with travel or seeing the world (and better yet, really living and working elsewhere in the world!). I can think of few things that are more developmental so I applaud anyone that travels while they are young. </p>
<p>But they should just call it that, rather than try to package it as ‘giving back’ and helping the less fortunate IF the program really is more about travel and partying. I am especially suspect of a lot of group teen travel (or even travel abroad) where one just parties with other American teens (and so it grossly limits one’s exposure to the foreign).</p>
<p>Though I also think putting travel on a college resume seems just silly. It would seem the more insular one’s life, the more american-centric your perspective, the more one thinks others will find it remarkable that you’ve actually travelled on vacation to another country. Adcoms probably aren’t remotely impressed though and it probably gives the opposite impression of what is intended.</p>
<p>haha! This is really something. Thanks for the link.
It is increasingly tricky to reward deserving teens whose hearts are in the right places.
I am HOPING teens will find local avenues to contribute in fundamental ways - there are documented local needs almost everywhere and these may be more accountable than contrived EC’s.
In the last ten years it’s become noticeable that Tiger Moms are arranging truly incredible activities for their teens’ resumes - we do see it in Silicon Valley, where people have the money for such things. They may need to better disguise their plans, though.
Reminds me of our local newspapers featuring supposed do-gooder teens and their international “projects” which on the surface had merit but which - included in the depths of the article - that MOM arranged things or “pushed” the teen to do the activity - things like documenting elderly immigrants’ stories (Grandma included) – err the article gave the impression the teen girl was dragged along into this worthy cause…and - my favorite - “determining” during a family visit to India that there was a need for women’s healthcare there (!) and setting up a charity for such purpose (umm Silicon Valley, where the teen lives, is on the other side of the world from there, but teen was able to easily travel courtesy of wealthy parents…fundraise…and also interact with video or whatever with her in country contacts…)</p>
<p>I’m reminded of an article in The Onion about the tragedy of the closing of a local soup kitchen that served the homeless. Tragic not because the people living on skid row no longer had a place to get free meals but because the local high school students who are aspiring to selective colleges no longer had a venue to readily do their “good works.” It had interviews with panicky high school juniors fretting about what was going to become of them.</p>
<p>If I could, I’d start a summer program called “IMBY” (you know – NIMBY is Not-in-my-backyard) – this would be In My Backyard. Where kids try and help the poor people or battered women or malnourished children who live nearby. Yes, there is poverty right here in America. There are people who need help learning English. There are people who go to bed hungry. OK, so it doesn’t require a plane ride and your parents don’t have to spend $4000+ for the experience, but if the point is helping others, you can do it where you live.</p>
<p>This didn’t involve international travel but…I saw an big article with photos in the paper about a group of church kids from Cleveland who came down to Cincinnati to fix up poor people’s houses. Because, you know, there are no opportunities for that in Cleveland.</p>
<p>Edit–not to take anything away from the actual good they did. And it’s probably easier to get kids to volunteer if it involves travel with other kids to a new area.</p>
<p>Well, kids aren’t the only ones doing it!
I love to read about fundraisers and benefits in NYC -or now in the Hamptons- where I imagine the cost of one ballgown could outstrip the money they raise. I guess organizers have to make it fun or no one will go but it still strikes me as odd.</p>
<p>I used to give money to a local philanthropic organization but boycotted their expensive thank-you dinners, which looked pretty in the paper but surely used up much of the donated funds. They have stopped doing these fancy-schmancy events and I am glad. I think their emphasis now is on more grassroots donors, not a few big-ticket writers, and that is a good thing.</p>
<p>College admissions workers may say they do not fall for these boondoggles, but from my experience looking at college admissions results over over the years, they still do. Trips to Africa seem to yield better admissions results than South America and Asia.</p>