A lot of students grow up spending their summers at day and then sleepaway camp. Camp offers an opportunity to spend time in nature, try new activities, and, most importantly, make new friends and develop social skills away from home. The social development camp provides can be integral for student success. Kids often leave camp feeling more confident, capable, and self-reliant. 

However, there comes a time when traditional camp starts to hinder rather than help a student’s growth. As students get older, they need to orient more and more of their choices around the college admissions process. Students need to pick the hardest classes they can handle. They need to pick a suite of activities that sincerely interest them, and that they hope to pursue in college. They also need to start spending their summers bolstering their applications. They can do that by picking activities that will help them become an appealing applicant at their target schools. 

Colleges want intellectually curious students who seek out new opportunities, want to learn, and try to engage with the world around them. It doesn’t matter whether a school is looking for an oboe player or a dancer, for a club leader or a good soldier—these three qualities are indispensable. They are the most important things a student can demonstrate in their application. Summer programs and activities are an integral part of showcasing these characteristics. 

While camp can offer opportunities to demonstrate leadership and responsibility, it often compares poorly to the other activities students explore. For example, a student who attends a pre-college program and takes a variety of economics classes receives all of the social benefits of being at camp, but also has a bevy of intellectual and academic experiences that the camper does not. The student who attended the pre-college program may now be inspired to study economics at college; they may have their sites on the econ or investment club. Admissions officers look at an experience like that and know that the student has a sense of what to expect at college, has authentic academic interests in a specific field, and has picked up all of the social benefits of being at camp. 

The question becomes, then: how do you pick a summer program that’s right for you? The most important consideration is what your student is actually interested in! College applications are about storytelling. What story does your student want to tell about themselves? If a student loves literature and poetry, admissions officers will be able to see that if the student participates in the poetry club at school and attends workshops over the summers. 

That does not mean that summers need to focus on pre-established interests. Students should feel encouraged to spend summers exploring new activities. If your student wants to see if they like robotics, doing a robotics camp is a great idea. There are lots of ways to make a story coherent (“I wanted to try new things while I could.”) The important thing is that a student’s choices not appear cynical. 

There are some activities that we suggest avoiding, as a result. Specifically, admissions offices can be wary of what is called “voluntourism” and other adjacent activities. Volunteering can obviously be a very important part of an application. However, admissions officers want to see volunteering that affects students’ immediate communities. Working with special needs children, spending time at an elder care facility, cleaning up parks, working with a charity focused on the homeless—these are the things colleges like to see, assuming that the student is doing them with consistency. Less appealing are volunteer opportunities in which students go to Central America or the Caribbean to dig wells. Though these organizations may do good work, they often read as “vacations.” That’s why it’s called “voluntourism.” They make colleges wonder why the student isn’t volunteering closer to home (they assume it’s because the student is trying to cynically bolster their college applications, or enjoy some nice weather). These kinds of volunteer opportunities are also less likely to translate to college campuses. A student who tutors children can easily continue doing that while at college. There are not many wells to dig near most universities. 

Of course, there is a place for summer camp, sports camps, and other less “intellectual” pursuits. Colleges are looking for diversity. Parents often assume that means racial or religious diversity, but diversity actually means something much broader. Schools need soccer players and mathletes. They need people who lead and people who want to work behind the scenes. They need extroverts and introverts. They don’t want every student to do robotics camp. Being a camp counselor requires responsibility and demonstrates commitment. It also tells colleges a bit about the student: they value their friends; they like tradition; they’re social, and so on. This can be a valuable thing to communicate if it’s what accurately reflects a student’s personality. It’s all about determining what story the student wants to tell and what kind of school they want to attend.

If a student intends to pursue athletics competitively or at the club level, sports camps demonstrate a commitment to their sport. Colleges actively want athletes, even if they are not going to play on the varsity team. Athletes are comfortable working in groups, are disciplined, used to devoting hard work and time to an activity, and, most importantly, often devote that hard work and time out of passion. Most students who play sports do not play in college. Admissions officers know, as a result, that students are choosing to put in the effort out of passion, and not for the sake of getting into school. If being an athlete is an integral part of a student’s personality, and they plan to continue dedicating themselves to athletic in college, then pursuing athletics in the summer makes sense. If, however, you are hoping to sell yourself as a jazz musician and debater, it would be better to focus more on those skills rather than attending basketball camp. 

There are countless ways for students to meaningfully spend their summers. What matters is making conscious decisions with their admissions goals in mind. Students should actively pursue opportunities to explore new interests, improve on existing skills, demonstrate their commitments to their passions, and to tell the story they want to tell to admissions officers. 

If you have any questions about this topic, or would like to learn more about the admissions work we do at Tutoring Service of New York, send us a note to info@tutoringserviceny.com, or visit our website at https://tutoringserviceny.com.