It’s easy enough for students to deploy meaningful summer experience in the college essay (and to actually USE such summers to figure out who they are and what they care about). But what constitutes a meaningful summer experience?

Getting a scholarship to study language in Japan, then independently researching local politics, is definitely meaningful and impressive. But travel is NOT the centerpiece of his accomplishment. It’s the evidence of personal and academic initiative, passion, and resourcefulness, not the fact of the trip itself, that adds force to this essay.

Any kind of summer work, volunteering, or study that shows passion, initiative, resourcefulness, work ethic, and/or responsibility is just as good. Just going to summer camp, if that means having supervised, aimless, non-academic, and fully funded fun all summer, is probably not going to seem age-appropriate or impressive in the eyes of admissions officers. But a 16- or 17-year-old camp counselor, store clerk, hospital volunteer, or Mathcamper will have plenty of opportunities, in life and on the college application, to show a few of these qualities.

More on this later. And thanks! I welcome more questions and thoughts!