S3E3: How to Decide Junior Year Summer Activities
Today's question of the week- "How do I decide summer activities my Junior year?"
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Today's question of the week- "How do I decide summer activities my Junior year?"
In today's episode, Thomas describes ways for high school Juniors to enjoy their summers in ways that will strengthen their upcoming college applications. He warns against common errors that students and their parents often make as they plan out this crucial period in the college preparation timeline.
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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. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about summer. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of it, talk about how we should be managing things, what should we be looking at specifically for juniors. Because juniors, it is now crunch time. You should have just gotten your transcripts, probably waiting for your AP scores if you took AP tests. And you probably, if your school has them, you've met with your college counselor and you may have even started writing your essays with your English teacher. So what do we do this summer? Well, first of all, we start by looking at our transcript.
Your grades came in, were they what you wanted? Were they what you needed? Was there a problem? If you had a wobble in a class, certainly we don't want to grade grub, but I hope that you've approached the teacher. I hope that you've pledged your case. You've made sure that there's no errors or omissions in your grading, so that you're putting your best foot forward.
If maybe you need to retake a class this summer, you can certainly scramble and do that now if there were mitigating circumstances. If you just didn't do that well, it's not going to help you to retake it, but if you missed a large chunk of the class, for example, or there was something that happened that you can talk about in the additional information essay, then certainly it might be worth looking into taking a course for credit, remotely is fine, but just to show that you can do the work. The next thing we want to think about is test prep. Where are you on your test prep? Ideally, you are not starting now. If you are a rising sophomore, definitely it's a good time to start, but if you just finished your junior year, you should have been practicing.
If you haven't, get on that. I know that some schools are still test-optional, but the reality is that testing matters now. ACT, SAT, does not matter. I've discussed this at length in other podcast episodes, but you need to be doing something and practice is the name of the game here. You need to dedicate time to study and then practice, practice, practice, learn the system, get comfortable with the way the questions are presented.
Get comfortable with the time crunch. Don't practice in a time free environment. Really put yourself in test conditions. If you're able to find a tutor, I highly recommend getting one or at the very least taking some online classes to familiarize yourself with the test and put your best foot forward. It is okay to take it several times, but you don't want to be taking it every single month just hoping.
Wait, wait, wait. Bide your time, do the work, be ready, and then you can turn in the best possible performance. And you can take that test all the way up to early November, really, and have account for the early action and early decision applications. Now, what are you doing for your summer? Um, are you working?
Are you attending some kind of academic program? You know, I hear from a lot of parents, “Well, we really want to take our children to Europe for a month”, or “we want to take them down to see family in, you know, South America or Asia” or whatever that looks like and as a parent, I understand that and as a parent of a boarding school student, I really understand that because I miss my son when he's not home. I want to spend time with him. But in terms of education outcomes, I think it's very important to step back and have a realistic assessment of what our objectives are. If the objective is to spend time with family, okay. Very important. I understand that. And certainly we can focus that. But the dissonance comes in when I have families saying, we want our child to go to a top university, but we also want to spend a month traveling through Central Europe or Western Europe or whatever that looks like. And the problem with that is that there's not much you're taking away from that in the context of an application. And I know that that sounds kind of cold-blooded and clinical and calculating, but the reality is it's very hard to write about your very fancy trip through the south of France in an essay.
The other thing I would caution against: we have a lot of students who might have family in a less developed country. And so the way they try and get around this is they go back to spend time with family, but then they go volunteer in a village, uh, in their family village to do something. And I don't want to take away from that because I think it is important for the student. I think it's, you know, obviously wonderful if they're teaching English to the kids or, you know, whatever it is that they're doing, working with the local schools or the library, but the reality is that. That is something that a lot of students do and so the impact of it has been blunted significantly. So trying to stand out and trying to differentiate yourself in that environment is going to be challenging at best and ineffective at worst.
So at this point really I hope that you've been able to clarify what your objectives are. And if you are going for highly competitive schools, you do need to make the most out of your summer. Now, what happens if you had summer plans and they go poof, cloud of smoke, right? The internship gets withdrawn, the company you're going to work for collapses, the class that you were going to take, it's not being offered anymore.
These things happen. And so first of all, what we want to do is, you know, make sure that we talk about that in the, in the common application, in the additional information section. But most importantly, you can't use that as an excuse to throw your hands up and say, well, I had a plan. It didn't work. So I'm going to go to the beach with my friends.
No, go get a job, any kind of job, literally go find a local ice cream parlor and scoop ice cream. Go work at McDonald's, go do whatever you can do and do it meaningfully. And it really has to be consistent over time. I want you working five, six days a week, uh, for at least six to eight weeks, right? Because then we have learning.
Then we have a supervisor that can write a meaningful recommendation about you, how you perform over time, how you perform under pressure. And yes, I know some people will laugh about, well, what does it say about you that you work in an ice cream store when my classmates are working, you know, at newspapers or in banks or, you know, at hedge funds?
And I understand that, but I think there's a lot of learning that comes out of that. We've talked about this at length before, but just self-discipline, reliability, customer service, having to deal with adversity. All of those things are things that you can demonstrate through even what seems on the surface a very kind of entry-level menial job.
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And so it's a great learning experience and it's a great opportunity for you to make progress. You know, lemons out of lemonade, as it were. But ideally, you've been listening to the podcast, you've prepared for your summer well in advance, you're not scrambling right now, and you have a clear plan as to how you are going to make the most out of things.
Now, one thing I do particularly want to address is that I get a lot of students, I'm seeing a lot of students who are saying, look, I've been going to this camp for my whole life and I've been a counselor and then, you know, I was a counselor in training and then a counselor, and now I want to be a senior counselor.
And we look at that and we say, okay, you know, it's taking up. Maybe six to eight weeks of your summer, and I get it. It's a lot of fun. You have deep friendships there. They're great memories, and I want to be careful because it's not something that is a bad experience per se. The question is, how is it helping you move forward in your goals and your objectives? If this is a general outdoor summer camp that, you know, many of you attend over the summers, see if you can't find some way to differentiate your experience there. What do I mean by that? So for example, let's say you're interested in a pre-med track. Well, reach out to the camp and say: Hey, can I have some responsibilities, can I learn basic first aid or, you know, more than basic first aid?
Can I learn some triage techniques? Are there things that I can do to really kind of not just go and do the standard camp counselor route that everybody is doing, but really put myself in a position where I can learn something. If you're interested in business, for example, or economics, can you volunteer to help in the business office?
Right? How does billing work? How do you manage your vendors? How do you juggle payment for all the goods and things? How do you plan the budget for a camp, right? What happens when you go over budget or under budget or you miss order or, uh, food and you need to scramble and bring in more supplies on short notice? What does HR look like? So, that's what we're I think there's a lot of ways that you can personalize your experience there, and at the same time, really enjoy yourself and get the most out of that time.
Likewise, if you are working in any kind of internship or job, obviously, number one, you need to show up, you need to do what's asked of you, and you need to work very hard.
But don't be afraid to have a conversation with your manager, have a conversation with the person who's responsible for bringing you in, in the beginning, and saying, look, this is really what I want to get. out of this, right? So I want to study mechanical engineering. And I know that there's a lot of aspects of this that, you know, are just things I need to do.
But can I spend a few hours a week working with the engineering team or the people that are thinking about these kinds of things to kind of learn from them and then see if you can't volunteer extra hours off the clock to help them when you're at home or do research, things like that. Show that initiative, right?
Because at the end, what we really want to do is get a meaningful recommendation and meaningful recommendations from a summer experience, again, What we want to focus on is not that person's place in the organizational chart. So definitely you don't want to be going up to the highest ranking person that you can find and asking them for a recommendation.
If you spend your summer doing, as a research assistant in a lab, unless you've worked side by side day in day out with the head of the lab, don't go ask her for a recommendation. Right? Ask the grad student who has seen you perform consistently day in, day out. And I know a lot of people say, well, but, you know, we want to go to the person who's most senior because their title carries the most weight.
And certainly, yes, the title carries weight, but what carries even more weight when you're reading, when we're reading this recommendation is somebody who really understands a student who can say, This is their strength. This is their weakness. This is how they worked to overcome that weakness. They took feedback really well.
One time they made a big mistake and this is how they dealt with it. And this is why I think going to university and studying this particular thing is really going to help them. achieve their goals and they truly are passionate about this thing that they did. And that's the same for working in an ice cream parlor, working in an advanced genetics lab, working at a robotics startup, working in finance, whatever it is that you're doing, you want to be able to have that perspective because these people are able to provide a very unique take on you.
Right? Because your school counselor sees you in the context of school. Your coach might see you in the context of sports and teamwork. Your teachers see you, obviously, through the lens of academia. If you're doing something over the summer that is unique, unique to those experiences, then that gives us a really, really interesting perspective.
And so you want to ask them for the recommendation loaded into the common application. And then it's not saying that you're going to send it to every school, but certainly some schools allow or even encourage those additional recommendations. And that's something that we can, you know, that you can then drop into the common application to round out that perspective.
So we do want to be thinking holistically. We do want to be thinking about Again, what is it, right, working backwards, what is it that I think I'm interested in doing? What is it that I think I'm interested in learning? Okay, how do I put myself in a position to be competitive for that? And then, of course, now if you're a junior, you're starting to think about what schools best position me to accomplish that goal.
And this is really important, because until this point, the school list has been somewhat ephemeral. Right, somewhat just up in the sky and you're making all these lists and, oh, I'd like to go here, I'd like to go here, this, my cousin went here, my mother went here, my best friend went there, but now it's really time for you to step back and drill down and be very specific and selfish, and I use this word intentionally and I use it often, being selfish about what you need and want from the school.
All right, so what your parents want, what your siblings want, what your friends want, that's all great. But you are the one who's going to spend the next four years there. Do you want a large campus? Do you want an urban campus? Do you want a smaller private liberal arts school? Do you want a larger research-focused institution?
You need to start understanding how that experience is going to shape your time at school, your experiences, the opportunities afforded you and really start to pull apart. Okay. I know that I want to be in the Northeast or West. I want to be at a mid-sized school with a high teacher-to-student ratio.
With opportunities to play these sports or do these arts or whatever it is that you're most interested in. Then you can start to worry about your probability of admission. But you need to have your target set first and you need to build your list accordingly. If you're able to visit schools, we've talked about this before, by all means, do that.
If you are not able to visit schools, do not panic, right? You can interact with the schools. Most of them now, almost all schools now, have virtual interactions that you can do. Attend the online information sessions. Ask questions if you have them. Especially in the smaller schools, you'll hear about demonstrated interest.
And that is important. goes to demonstrated interest, right? But don't ask what I call Google questions. If you can answer the question from a quick Google search, it just makes you look kind of like you're grubbing for attention, right? Go approach the admissions officer with a question that shows, hey, I'm interested.
I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do. I've done the research, I see what your department and what your school offers, but I have some questions around my experience. That's something they love to answer. It goes without saying that these interactions should be driven 100 percent by the student.
If you are the type of parent who wants to jump in and do it for them because they're busy, completely understand that, but understand that in schools with demonstrated interest, that's going to count against your child. They want to see self motivation. They want to see young adults who can balance a lot of priorities and still advocate for themselves.
Start to build that list. We want to start thinking about early action, early decision. That is really going to change our approach, right, in terms of our school list. Because, you know, sometimes I see students who say, Well, what's my highest probability I'll just early decision there and be done? Okay, I respect that and I understand that.
But we want to go to the school that best fits us, not the easiest path, and sometimes if you're fortunate, those two lines intersect. Be smart about, you know, can I apply early decision? Are there financial constraints? Is the school I really want to go to, is that kind of out of reach early decision?
So then maybe we want to apply to an early action program to keep our options open for regular decisions. I've talked about that in previous podcasts. We'll talk about that a lot more as we get closer to the fall. But as you're building your school list, I want you to be specific and intentional with schools you put on there.
Don't ever put a school on your list that you're not excited to go to. Even your quote unquote safety schools need to be a school where you say, okay, you know what? I see myself there, right? Because spending the time and money applying to a school that you wouldn't go to no matter what benefits nobody.
So, welcome to summer. For my rising juniors, just finished sophomore year, you should have already engaged in something meaningful to do this summer. Work is completely fine. Again, consistent performance over time matters. I know a lot of students, uh, not a lot, some students will spend the summer kind of previewing their courses in the fall.
And that's great if you have the extra time to do it, but just studying for the SAT and tutoring up on the classes that are coming is not an effective way to spend your summer. It's not meaningful. Really get out there, do something you enjoy. And that right there is going to make a big difference when it comes to next summer and your ultimate application process senior year.
Thank you for joining us. Please follow us on Instagram and TikTok and look forward to continuing this conversation.
