Colleges Want to Know What You Did Last Summer
The questions from parents start when their kids go to high school. Sometimes earlier. “Is there anything my child can do this summer that will help their chances of getting into a good college?” The answer, as T&C’s editor-in-chief Stellene Volandes learned in a recent interview, is an emphatic yes. But that comes with some caveats.
Volandes interviewed Dr. Kat Cohen, founder and CEO of IvyWise, an admissions consulting firm with an impressive track record of getting students into this country’s most prestigious universities, and in a wide-ranging conversation (the first video installment of which can be seen here), they discussed some of the most pressing questions families and applicants have right now. Highlights from their chat, along with additional resources and a list of recommended summer programs, are below.
SV: We get so many questions from parents about how they can help their children get through the very stressful admissions process. One we get asked most often is, “Is there something my child can do during their summer vacation that might help them get into college?”
KC: Yes, absolutely. And in fact some selective schools actually ask on their application: “Tell us what you have done with the last few summers.” So we start advising our students on their summer plans when they get into ninth grade. Maybe it’s something that relates to their academic interests, or maybe it’s doing something that relates to their extracurricular interests, but they should be utilizing their time wisely. Because even if they don’t apply to one of the schools that ask, they will most likely be writing about their summer activities on the Common Application, which has space for up to 10 activities they can put down.
That said, this doesn’t mean not to take a vacation. In fact, they should take a vacation. But usually, in the U.S., you have about 12 weeks of summer, and there are things that you can do with part of that time to enhance your overall profile.
Another frequent question: Is getting an old-fashioned summer job—say, scooping ice cream—a good idea?
It depends on what your interests are. Say you’re looking for a job in town and you’re very interested in computer science. Are you going to get a job scooping ice cream or are you going to get a job at the computer store fixing the computers in the back? If you have the opportunity to get the job at the computer store, I would say that’s where you should be working. There’s nothing wrong with scooping ice cream; you can learn a lot about business doing that. It just depends on what you identify to be your true interests. What’s going to make you happy? What will demonstrate your interest in a particular area?
When it comes to what to do during your summer, what is a mistake many students make that admissions officers can see right through?
One of the biggest mistakes is dividing up your summer into too many chunks. If you’re doing eight things in the summer, you’re not really doing any one thing for any significant period of time, so we’re not getting a sense of who you are and what’s important to you.
Colleges also don’t love to see what I would call the one-off experiences, where, let’s say, one summer you went to Costa Rica to build houses for three weeks. Okay, so you most likely paid for that program, which is fine. But are you interested in Spanish? Are you interested in architecture? Are you interested in community building? How are you showing that interest when you get back home? You really have to show in some way that your summer experiences connect to your core interests.
What are low-cost options students can pursue during their summer breaks?
A lot of students forget about this, but during that time that you have available, you can be reading books on your interests. Or be auditing online college courses, many of which are free. Both are ways to enhance your profile even without leaving the house.
Should you write about what you did during your summer vacation in your application essay?
If you just want to say, “My family and I went to this fabulous beach and we lay out all summer and I watched Mom and Dad drink margaritas all day,” that is not going to be a good summer essay. But if you did something really impactful, that was meaningful, it could end up being a very good topic.
Click above to watch the video, and see below for additional resources—and specific programs—recommended by IvyWise.
Where to Audit College Courses
MIT Open Learning
includes courses on MIT OpenCourseWare and MITx courses on the edX and MITx Online platforms.
edX
offers courses from 260+ content partners, including U.S. colleges and universities like Brown, Caltech, Cornell, Dartmouth, NYU, Rice, Stanford, and others.
Coursera
offers courses from 325+ partners, including leading universities like Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Penn, Stanford, and Michigan. They also offer courses from companies like Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Meta, and Pepsico.
Academic Earth
offers courses from universities including Berkeley, Notre Dame, Oxford, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Wesleyan, and Yale.
International Programs for Students Who Like to Travel
National Security Language Institute for Youth
provides language study overseas for U.S. high school students through full scholarships to participate in intensive summer and academic year programs. The summer program is 6-8 weeks long and is offered in a range of countries, including China, South Korea, Turkey, and others.
CIEE Global Navigator
offers 3- to 4-week summer programs, including language immersion, art courses, STEM courses, and service learning abroad across 30+ destinations, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Denmark, Japan, South Africa, and Taiwan.
Where There Be Dragons
offers summer abroad programs for students looking to travel with intention, including language intensives in China or Taiwan (for Mandarin), Bolivia or Guatemala (for Spanish), and other programs in locations like Nepal, Peru, Senegal, and Thailand.
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