Ep.6/ What summer activities look best on a college application?
Want to know what summer activities look best on a college application? In this episode we discuss how to utilize summertime for college applications.
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Summer is an awesome time for students. It’s time for connecting with relatives and friends, traveling, and relaxing, but it’s also time for creating opportunities. While enjoying summer just relaxing can be a great way to recharge, it’s important to take time to learn as well. It can be the first step to a successful career.
In this episode, Thomas shares strategies and tips to utilize summertime in the best way possible. Not only do summer activities look good on a college application, but they can also be a gratifying experience.
Summertime also means academic programs and some parents might wonder whether or not those are good for their children. Thomas says that it depends because some of these programs are offered by third parties. Tune in to learn more!
Key Highlights
Summertime is important for relaxation and connection but also for self-growth.
Summer jobs are great opportunities to listen, question, and learn.
Visiting universities can be helpful during this time.
Summer is also a great time to get ahead in your application.
Don’t forget to enjoy your summer and relax as well!
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes. But I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. And today we're going to be talking about something that everybody loves, summer vacation. As a high school student, summer vacation takes on a whole new meaning, and has a lot of impact on your admissions process when you're applying to university, so we want to look at it today.
From that perspective, parents, I know you're trying to figure out what should my student do over the summer, but also trying to balance family commitments, right? Summer is often the only time we have to take a trip. It might be a big fancy trip halfway around the world, or it might be driving down to see nearby relatives, or whatever it is. I want to stress that summer should be a time both for connection and relaxation, but also to help us grow as a human and prepare better as a potential applicant. I think it's very important during the summer for students to breathe, to relax, to enjoy time with friends, with family, and with siblings.
During the school year, you're pulled in so many different directions, always running, always scrambling, always short on time. You have assignments, tests, quizzes, extracurricular activities, sports, work, and all the things that you're juggling every day. And so some are really, it's easy to look at that and say, “Oh, thank goodness, my time will more or less be my own. I can relax, I can finally just breathe.” And I hear that and I feel that. But there's a balance there between spending your whole summer wound tight doing things, and missing a great opportunity to grow and learn and advance your case for admissions. So what I want to start talking about today is using our time wisely.
What we see a lot of times with students, especially students from let's say, more affluent families is that they take these amazing trips during the summer. And you know, the students don't really have that much say in it. “Mom and Dad plan this great, really amazing trip.” And they go along with it. It usually happens right in the middle of the summer, and so they have a few weeks in the beginning, maybe a few weeks at the end, but not enough time to dig in and do something meaningful. And they come to us maybe junior year. And we realize, wow, there's a huge gap. There's this huge hole in your progression in your development and your growth. Because you can't really talk about the trip you took to Paris or the safari you took in South Africa, because, yes, you I'm sure met interesting people and learned some things. But the reality is that it didn't really advance you as a human, more or less.
And there are obviously exceptions to everything, but what we want to avoid is a situation where your summers are not spent doing meaningful things. And what do we mean by meaningful, right? Because we don't want to over strategize it. We really don't want to be that person who is only focused on their applications and really loses sight of life, and loses sight of enjoying themselves, and doing what they love.
So the first thing I want to talk about is work. I've spoken about this in our activities, podcast, but when it comes to work, some of you may work for the experience, and some of you may work because you have to. And both cases are perfectly fine. Both cases are great. What you do is far less important than what you learn from it, and the opportunities you create within that work.
So if you are a student, for example, that needs to work that needs to generate an income and so you're working maybe in the foodservice industry, or in retail, or fast food, or at a carwash, or whatever it is that you're doing, own that. Do it to the best of your ability. Take advantage of working there, and see if there are opportunities for you to get advanced training or even, you know, management training. Or shadow a manager, or learn, or work a different area to get more experience, right?
If you, for example, are working retail, can you find a retail job that matches your interest? If you're interested in the environment? Can you maybe go get a job at say, Rei, or and in a, in an area that is focused in national parks, for example. Or somewhere that gives you exposure to those things that you're interested in? Can you work, if you're interested in journalism, at a newspaper or magazine? Can you freelance? There's so many opportunities now to freelance even with chat GPT entering the room? Do we have the opportunity, you have the opportunity to generate an income off of that thing that you love?
Now, for those of you who say yes, but you know, my mother is in the securities business, and I want to go into finance. And so I'm going to go internet, a hedge fund. Okay, that's great. But there's a big difference between just showing up and sitting at a desk and, and killing time and creating opportunities for yourself. Are you listening? Are you taking the people around you to coffee when you have a chance? Are you asking thoughtful questions? Are you doing research? Are you prepared? Nobody expects you to add value. Everybody expects you to learn the ropes and listen.
But for example, can you put together a trading idea or two and pitch it to one of the investment managers at the firm? Can you sit in on investor relation calls? Or meetings? How are you evidencing that you are going above and beyond to learn more from this opportunity? If you're a musician, for example, and you're spending the day practicing and in rehearsal, how are you letting off steam? How are you going out and having fun with your instrument or in music or something totally different. Maybe you're interested in sailing. And so when practices done, you know, race down and jump into a boat.
Whatever it is, what we want to do is have a good balance between things that advance your interests, and help your strategy, and things that help develop you, as a person help you grow as a person. And sometimes this might evolve again, back to courage, a previous episode. The courage to tell your parents, “Listen, mom and dad, that really sounds interesting, and it's a once in a lifetime trip, but I need four to six weeks of work experience or to take this class or whatever it is that you want to do or need to do. And so can we work together to find a solution that works for everyone?” Right?
And so I think that the lessons that we draw from what we're doing, and we've talked about this in activities, in terms of discipline, in terms of self discipline, self awareness, the ability to be dependable and reliable, and show up on time. These are all important things that go into summer work.
Now, a lot of parents will also say to me, “Well, what about academic programs? Right? My son or daughter wants to go to Stanford. And so should they go to a Stanford academic program?” And if you haven't figured it out by now, my favorite answer is, it depends. Because there is really no right answer. What I would caution you to do, first of all, is look at the academic offering, because many schools will simply lease space to third party providers. And if you're taking a third party provider course, even at a top campus, it's very, very different than courses that are offered, for example, for credit, by that university's faculty. It's going to be viewed very, very differently, because one is basically an exercise of privilege. Do you have the ability to pay for this course? And if so, I mean, great. But those kinds of programs have been deeply discounted by admissions officers because they realize that it is very segregated. There are high barriers to entry that not everybody can clear, and so they view them with a skeptical eye.
A better program would be one that's offered by the actual university that has scholarship opportunities that is competitive and requires an intensive application process. And so those are treated more as academic process. And that's great, but again, don't just go and take courses at the Harvard Summer Institute, because it's Harvard.
Really, the question is, why are you taking these. You know, even if it's a course that's not directly related to what you say you want to study? Why did you choose that course? What was it about that subject that interested you? And it might be as simple as “I've always had an interest in anthropology and my high school doesn't offer anything. And so this was really a chance to learn something. And there was a museum in Boston that I was able to spend time at and get an internship at and learn. And it was just something that I wanted to kind of pursue intellectually for the summer. And it taught me to think differently and creatively about things. And that helps me as an aspiring biologist, or musician, or business major or lawyer in this way.”
And so it's being able to, again, justify why you're spending your most valuable resource, which is time on this particular thing. I would also be wary of summer travel programs, a lot of times those are put on by private companies. They're interesting, they seem interesting on the surface. You get to tour and meet students and see different parts of the world. But again, they smack of privilege, and universities are not overly enthusiastic about those kinds of experiences. And the takeaways you get from them tend to be somewhat trite and universal across most of the students that are taking them.
Another option is visiting schools and visiting universities, and certainly, that's something that can be helpful. Although, without actual students on campus, it's very hard to get a sense of what that university is going to offer you should you enroll there. And so when you're talking to summer students, or people that are there over the summer, it's just a very different vibe, it's a very different atmosphere, you're not going to get a sense of what it's like day in and day out.
You're not going to get a sense of what the student body is like. So it can be helpful in terms of just deciding, do I like the location, or do I like the size, or do I like the feel of the physical campus. But in terms of the environment, that's a little bit harder.
For those of you who might not have the opportunity to cross the country and visit schools. One thing that I might suggest is, look for analogous schools closer to where you live, that might be within driving distance. You go look at a large state school, or go look at some smaller private schools, because then at least thar can give you a sense of what it's going to be like at, let's say, a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. If you live in Los Angeles, and you can't make the trip that summer, you'll go see the, go to the Claremont Colleges, go see what a small academic environment is like.
Now, some schools do look at visitation and tours and things like that as an indication of interest. And you'll hear that term indication of interest. Keep in mind that indication of interest, again, is privileged biased. And so we do want to be aware of the fact that if you can't visit a school, or if it will cause you hardship, you can first look at flying programs. Many schools will have flying programs for students who are not able to afford to visit. You can apply and if you're selected, they will cover all your costs, bring you in, and show you the school. You get to talk to teachers, current students, they're a really good way for you to get a sense of the school.
But if that's not a possibility, if you're not selected, if it's not, for whatever reason feasible, certainly you can talk about that in your application, you can talk about the fact that visiting the school was just economically and logistically impossible. But these were the steps you took to get to know the school better, you did a virtual tour, you reached out to students in different clubs that you were interested in, you visited an analogous school close by you. And that's how you got a sense for why a larger school does fit you or doesn't fit you.
So all of these things really need to come together as you're thinking about your summer and how you're spending your time. The next thing for juniors, and this is very specific to juniors, is that the common application will open in August, August 1 usually. And so the summer is a very good time for you to get a head start on your application. And what I usually recommend to students is you can open a common application account and do the data entry. There's a lot of data entry that needs to happen that takes a staggering amount of time. And that's something you can get a head start on because it will carry over year to year on the common application. So put in your address your telephone number, make sure all those are correct. The grammar is correct, punctuation, spelling all of those things.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, don't start writing your essays. We had a student just this last year, who got some very bad advice from her school counselor, and private counselor and wrote all of her essays in June. Why is that a bad idea? Well, first of all, you don't take into account any of the activities or learning you did over the summer, and that's a serious problem. Because you're missing. There's this huge gap now in the story that you're telling, because you're not talking at all about what you did in this critical summer between junior and senior year. The next thing is that some universities will publish their upcoming essay questions on their website before the common app opens, but some do not. What happened in this case is that she wrote all of these essays, but many of the schools changed their essay questions for this year. And so all of a sudden, she had a set of essays that did not match up to the questions being asked. She wasted a lot of time in June, she wasted the opportunity to talk about her summer, and now we needed to scramble and rewrite all of these essays to answer the actual questions being asked.
So let's be smart about how we spend our summer. Let's make sure that we do take time to decompress. Let's make sure we take time to enjoy life with family with friends, who get out there, who have fun, and enjoy your life, but also keep one eye on where you want to be.
And we've talked about this before, Steve Jobs in his commencement address to Stanford University talked about the ability to make sense of your life only by looking backwards. We talked about taking a calligraphy class and all the different things that led him to become one of the creative visionaries of our time, but I think that while he is 100% right, it's also possible to think ahead to where you want to be, and then look back at your life from that point.
So think about what it is that you love to do. And think about, okay, how do I get there? How do I get in a position to do that? Think about the steps that you need to take, and then start taking some of those steps now, right? Go ask for that research opportunity, ask for that internship, and create that opportunity.
For example, I had a student a few years ago, who was very into environmental science. He wanted to be an environmental science major. And he just was not getting the opportunities that he wanted. And so I said, you know, you're very outdoorsy person, why don't you look at Outward Bound. Look at one of their programs, one of their in service programs so it's not just an outward bound activity.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Outward Bound, you're out in the wilderness for several weeks, learning leadership, self reliance, independence, all of these good things. And part of an element of this was service to the national park system. So this particular group would go out into the wilderness for three weeks, and help clear trails, do firebreaks, things like that? He did that and he liked it so much and made such an impression. They invited him back as a counselor the following year. And he had glowing letters of recommendation from his teammates out in the field from the US, Forest Service Ranger, saying this is a person who is deeply committed to the environment, who listened, who learned, who asked extraordinary questions, who was a tremendous leader, who also knew how to follow. And this young man ended up getting into a very, very, very competitive program, and thriving. He's doing amazing work in the field right now. And it really stemmed from this ability to go out, get his hands dirty, challenge himself and do something very different.
So if there's any takeaway to this, it's please, enjoy your summers. But please enjoy them responsibly. I know that sounds cliche, but there's a way to do both. And parents, listen to your children, listen to your students create the space that they need to accomplish the things they need to accomplish to be successful in this admissions process.
Thank you for listening. I look forward to talking again soon.
Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to the admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing on our journey.
