Making the Most of Summer with Your College Application in Mind – College Bound Mentor Podcast #39

Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #39 and you’ll hear us talk how to build a meaningful, college-ready summer. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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• Show Notes
• Learn more about the College Bound Mentor podcast
• Transcript

College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #39: Making the Most of Summer with Your College Application in Mind

It’s never too early to start figuring out what your student will be doing next summer. There are endless options, but which one will be the most rewarding – for personal growth AND adding to that resume? In this episode, we first cover how to make the most of your summer experiences, how to nail the outreach letter for internships, and whether it’s still beneficial to get a summer job. Then, we share case studies so you can hear how high school students with very different passions & interests used their summer experiences to make a truly remarkable impact on their communities – and in turn, their college applications. Here’s a small sample of what you’ll hear in this episode:

• How summer camp builds confidence, independence, and leadership
• Ways to explore academics through courses and research
• Why regular jobs can outshine fancy internships
• Real student stories showing creative summer pathways
• How to plan early for competitive summer programs

Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

• Making the Most of Summer with Your College Application in Mind
  • [0:19] Welcome to the College Bound Mentor
  • [00:46] How to make the most of summer in high school
  • [01:24] What students gain from summer camp
  • [03:04] Leadership at camp (CITs, counselors, day camp vs. sleepaway)
  • [04:57] Should students stay at camp as CITs/counselors? Does it “hurt” college chances?
  • [06:36] Meaningful alternatives to camp: academic programs, intellectual exploration
  • [07:18] Online college-level classes (Coursera, edX) and what students can take
  • [07:52] On-campus pre-college programs
  • [08:21] How students can find research opportunities without family connections
  • [08:59] How to write a strong cold outreach email to professors
  • [13:12] Using summer to bolster academics
  • [14:24] The value of a regular job and why colleges appreciate work experience
  • [19:34] Internships vs. jobs: what actually matters for college admissions
  • [20:09] Using summer for reconnection, culture, travel, family time
  • [21:13] Case Study #1: The curious, geography-obsessed tennis coach + volunteer
  • [26:11] Case Study #2: The “Renaissance Engineer”
  • [30:32] Case Study #3: Business-minded students – paths into entrepreneurship & business
  • [35:51] Internships: how to ensure they offer real substance
  • [36:14] Jobs that teach business skills
  • [39:58] When to start planning summer (now!) + early deadlines
  • [41:38] Closing remarks & episode wrap-up
  • Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:05
That can be a really rich experience or it can be nothing.

00:19
Hey, CBMers, we are actually going to be talking about summer for this episode. We are your co-hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie. And even though it’s the middle of November, it’s almost Thanksgiving, now is actually the time it’s got started off because Stefanie was starting to investigate summer camps for her seven-year-old daughter. And so it’s time that a lot of students right now are really thinking about summer.

00:46
do you make the best of summer? And we’re going to talk about the different ways you can when you’re in high school. Summer camp is definitely one of the options. We’re also going to do some case studies for students of how they use their summers to their advantage. So let’s get going on this. I wish I actually didn’t ever go to summer camp. It wasn’t a thing where I was uh when I was growing up, although my mom tried to get us to go to summer camp.

01:13
because she grew up going to summer camp and really liked it and she was a counselor and it was kind of the whole thing. But in California, it wasn’t as much of a thing, but certainly summer camp’s one way that you can explore it. And as you guys were saying, just like the studies, what are some of the things that you think you benefit from going to summer camp? What are some of the things that have come out from that? Independence. The fact that at such, I think I was eight or nine when I went away and it was eight weeks. Now there’s no eight weeks, it’s seven weeks or we were talking about their session camps.

01:42
So it could be one week, it could be four weeks, it could be three and a half weeks. But the fact that at such a young age that you’re away from your parents or guardians and you are responsible for yourself and you’re just kind of thrown in there and you don’t have your parents to go to and you have to figure that out. And that’s really hard no matter what age you’re at. So I think that level of independence and then that leads to so much that leads to confidence that leads to

02:10
doing things on your own and being outside of your comfort zone for the first time that you wouldn’t normally do probably at that young age. What I mean, there’s a lot. What do you guys think? I also even remember for me, but saw it for my sons having a group of friends outside of school. Yeah, that’s a big one. There’s always going to be drama at some point at school. So you need to else, somewhere else to duck out to, I think.

02:36
And it’s also unplugged mostly. mean, most of the summer camps even now are unplugged. And I think that’s a huge thing because there’s very limited opportunities to just be completely in the moment, in the space, with somebody not having a phone or a device that’s gonna pull you away from it. So I do think it helps you create really strong bonds with other people. It also could bring in leadership. A lot of our clients will be summer camp counselors.

03:04
So that’s another thing. And even if they’re not doing sleepaway camp, even if they’re doing a day camp, that’s also a big piece where a lot of kids will have those responsibilities. So even though sometimes people say, oh, you know, don’t talk about summer camp, I’ve had some really good essays come out of summer camp. I had a student once who got into Penn and as we were, you know, brainstorming and talking about all of his experiences.

03:29
He was a numbers guy. He was always thinking in numbers, thinking in ways how to calculate things. And one of the things that he had done over the summer was he actually developed or created the Color War game. And he had to figure out what were going to be the prizes and how many kids were going to be in each of the groups and what was the pace of it. So he had this Google spreadsheet that he figured out all of the different to the minute of how everything was going to run.

03:56
He wanted to give them rubber duckies. We used to joke and call him rubber duckie boy, because it was like he had like a duckie that was going to be given for each prize. But then, of course, when the kids started coming in and doing the color war, they didn’t follow any of the rules that he had precisely planned out in his mind. And so everything sort of went chaotic. And so he had to quickly, on the fly, like recalculate how many points would be taken away if they did something this and how many points would be given of that. And so it was this whole essay about how he was constantly using numbers.

04:25
to figure out how he was gonna make Color War. And so even though it was driven from camp, it was a great essay about that. So there’s of ways that you Yeah, I remember that too. It was my first, I think, full year that I was with you guys. And I remember, oh yeah, this makes sense. We can write about camp when it was, yeah. If it makes sense. I mean, if it makes sense, absolutely, right? So I think that’s something.

04:52
I think I’ve gotten that question dozens of times. You know, kids who’ve gone to the same camp for years and years and years and years and a lot of their friends are going back to be CITs, freshman or sophomore year, and the parents want the kids to do something more productive. I’m doing air quotes. I get that question a ton. Like, is it going to hurt their chances for admissions to college if they are a CIT at camp and or even a counselor? I mean, I, I feel like the way I always answer that is

05:21
if this is where, if this is your kid’s happy place. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know how you, you don’t let them do it. And being a CITN counselor obviously comes with leadership opportunities. And this past summer or no, two summers ago, I had a kid do something really cool for the first time. It was the same thing. The parents were really, he ended up going to a very highly selective liberal arts school. So the parents were pretty adamant about him doing something very academic, but he was, his community service was volunteering at a library.

05:50
and he ended up creating book groups at the camp where he was a CIT. Each cabin had a book group and he moderated them and came up with the book ideas and questions. uh Pretty cool at a boys camp. There’s ways to really make the most of the experience, I think. I had a student who was interested in healthcare or like pre-health or I think she wanted to be a nurse.

06:18
So she ended up working in the nurse’s office while she was at camp as a CIT. So like there’s, you know, you have to kind of always make it your own. And I think that there’s always a way that you could do it. the thing about summer is that you want to do something that’s meaningful to you. And it’s like not so much what you do, but it’s what you take away from it and what you bring to it. And I think that’s the key for summer. So what are some other ways, you know?

06:43
We’re all, I guess we all want to go back to camp right now. I felt like I was at a camp when I was at that Rancho La Puerta. oh What are some other ways that you can spend your summers as a student? are some of that? mean, one of the ways would be like, as an example, if you want to go completely the opposite of camp, you want to explore an intellectual interest or explore a new interest, right? So what are some examples of where you’ve seen students do that really successfully? Yeah, for an academic interest,

07:12
kind of all over the board. I’ve had kids take online classes. There are two really good websites, Coursera and edX, not TedX, edX, that have college level free classes. um Some of them you have to pay a little bit, but it’s mostly nominal. I’ve had kids take psychology classes, sociology classes, finance classes, economics classes all over the place. And you know, it’s about what you learn and what you take away. So.

07:40
And that’s, you can do it, it’s a, a synchronistic, is that the word? You can do it at your own pace. I’ve had kids do obviously the traditional college summer programs on campus, you know, all over the place. Brown, Stanford, uh Wake Forest. Arbor. I mean, they all have them. They’re all different. Yeah. Some, some are run by the college. Some are run by a bigger company.

08:05
sometimes call them pay to play that operates on the college campus. But some of those are really high quality also. So it’s all, it’s really about what it is, not where you go. You can’t worry about where you go. I have had kids do continue their research through the summer. If they’re doing advanced science research or some kind of social science research or computer science research or math research, I’ve had them continue that over the summer. Yeah, I was just going to enter, well, a few really great points you brought up, but

08:32
One, with the research, I feel like a lot of times students come in or families come in, it’s kind of with internships too, which I know we’ll ultimately talk about or shadowing experiences, and they feel like they can’t get these research opportunities unless they know someone at a lab or at a college or et cetera. And I know that you guys have had luck with this too, but I’ve had students who’ve had a lot of luck, just kind of not cold calling, but have just been really persistent with emails and they’ve been.

08:59
very specific and I think when their passion and when it’s really genuine is in that email or is in that outreach and they’re persistent. I’ve had a lot of students be successful with that. So I just don’t want anyone who’s listening to feel like if they don’t know someone in a certain field that especially now I think it’s almost refreshing when you have that gritty kid that just keeps going after what they want, whether it’s again research or something else, another summer opportunity.

09:29
And I’ve had students do that as well. Stephanie, what would you, for somebody listening, what would they write? What would be a letter? What would be kind of an initial outreach letter? What would be the gist of it? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a short introduction, who they are and what their passion about and maybe what they’re studying in school or if they’ve had any experience and why they’re interested in this specific field.

09:55
I had a student whose grandfather suffered from dementia and that was something that he wanted to uncover everything there was about dementia. So first he did, I mean, this is all he did this on his own volition. This was before senior year and he started, and he’s in, I’m in New Jersey. So it was, he was also in New Jersey. So he was looking in the area and he started to look up all the professors who were, oh who was doing research in this. uh

10:25
in this area. And then I don’t know, it probably a list, honestly, of like 20 people within New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia area, Connecticut area. And that’s what it was. It was just, this is why this is my mission. This is why this is important to me. This is what I’ve done in the past. And this is how I’m also going to be an asset and in a humble way and be impactful. And this is why I want to help you out. And I want to learn as much as possible. Yeah. No, I think that’s such great advice because

10:54
It really can happen. if you can’t do it that way, there’s always these pay to play or there’s a lot of different programs. But we always recommend starting with the free option rather than having to pay for something else. Another area where students will use the summers if they have a special talent or they’re an athlete, a prospective recruited athlete, summer is a really good time to develop your portfolio. There’s many programs that will allow you to do that. And the one area

11:23
where it does give you a slight advantage to apply to do a program at a school where you think you want to apply and get in, is that typically when you’re doing a portfolio or some arts-based program, like at a Carnegie Mellon or at a Tisch or a USC film school, you’re actually going to be taking classes with professors that will be reviewing that. And so that gives them an opportunity to get to know you as a student, to see how teachable you are, and also give you some…

11:51
feedback so that you can incorporate that once you put your regular portfolio together. So we’ve definitely had students who’ve had success with that. And then also athletes, know, athletic piece. There’s so many college showcases and so that’s an opportunity for you to get yourself before a coach. And athletes seem to know about these usually and then just see if you can get some interest from a coach, particularly for the D3 schools or the Ivies. Anything else on special talent or athletic ability that you’ve seen?

12:19
Some of my athletes do coaching or reffing or umping over the summer, either as a paid job or volunteering for a community organization. That seems to be, know, if you really love your sport and you want to just, and that’s how you want to spend your time. Cause I think given the experience and the growth of a competitive athlete, they have a lot to offer in terms of mentorship for younger kids. So I think that’s a nice way for them to spend their time. No, definitely.

12:48
I think it’s also a good way to think about community service is that it’s always good to share your talent. So whatever that talent happens to be, if you could share it with the community, that’s a really good way to think about how you want to spend your time doing community service and building leadership. That’s a way that you could do that over the summer in lots of different ways. Another thing that we’ve seen students do is if they need to bolster their academics or their test scores. So summer is a good time to do that. So sometimes it’s that if there’s a deficit and you want to

13:18
get ahead of that, or if you have to retake a class, you’ve had some students who have needed to do that. Or if you want to jump ahead in math, a lot of times students will take or get a requirement out of the way. Studying for SATs, ACTs is when you have a big chunk of time. So a lot of students will do that over the summer. So that’s another way to use that in a productive way. Yeah, I’ve had kids do that this past summer and the summer before. Almost every summer. I have kids who are trying to jump ahead.

13:48
so that they can take the class they want to take their senior year. I think it’s really important too now as we’re seeing where especially like business programs and engineering programs are requiring certain to be at certain levels in math, especially for the most selective schools. em So if you know what type of college experience you want and you know what you want to study, a lot of people don’t and that’s fine. But if you know you want to go into engineering, computer science,

14:16
business. I think that’s also a really smart use of time over the summer. And then getting a job. I mean, that’s like, you know, that used to be what you did in the summer. Like I had a summer job. Did you guys all have summer jobs? Oh, yeah. Yeah. What was your stuff? Mostly waiting tables at country clubs, camp counts, day camp counselor. I worked at the beach club. Sounds very glamorous. a lot of guys. There were a lot of boys that we always had around.

14:45
Basically what we did is we would make all the salads, for the uh grab and go salads. So we’d make all the salads in the kitchen beforehand in the morning. And then we’d serve popcorn. uh We had that awful, those awful popcorn machines where you put in this like stick of like really processed butter and then would pop and then you would turn it over and try not to burn your hand, burn your arm when you were doing it. And then we’d hand out popcorn on the beach. So that was two summers. It was fun. It was a fun summer though.

15:13
Yeah, so getting a job, it teaches responsibility, it teaches interaction with people. I just met with a student yesterday and you know, sometimes if you don’t do a lot of stuff in school, for whatever reason, clubs aren’t your thing or you just haven’t found something, a lot of times work is the place where students really come alive. Like I had a student actually last year who, he just came alive when he worked. I mean, he was a much…

15:38
better work on some level than he was a student, at least early on in high school. And then the work gave him confidence and responsibility. And then he became a much better student because he could build that confidence outside of school and then apply it to school. So I think work is a really sometimes underrated and it doesn’t have to be an internship. mean, a lot of kids want to get an internship, but unless you know someone, it’s hard to get an internship as a high school student, particularly because there’s so many.

16:07
high school, so many college students. And then of course, there’s a lot of now a lot of graduate students who have graduated college. So getting a job, scooping ice cream, any of those things is sort of a rite of passage on some level. I’ve definitely had kids who are their best selves working. And you can tell, I mean, and they’ll just tell you, I just love to work. I love to be there. And then they get all kinds of great experience working with difficult customers, reporting to a boss.

16:35
uh Managing your time showing up on time and then i’ve had a couple of really motivated kids there was one this from a bunch years ago now who went to the business school at see boulder. was working at not a startup restaurant but a newer kind of restaurant chain and he got involved in bookkeeping marketing a little bit i mean his own initiative i mean they didn’t need that you know they didn’t ask him but he was kinda like okay this is a growing business icon of really want understand this.

17:04
what can I do? I can check your books, I can do all this stuff. So yeah, I think that’s a really good way for some kids to become their best selves and really grow as people. I’ve had a lot of students in the past two years, actually, write their personal statements about their jobs. And one, to your point, Abby, like she was working at a bagel store and that and she loved it. And then she started, they became viral and she started doing their social media because of like TikTok she was doing. oh

17:33
So yeah, you just would never think that would come out of working at the community bagel store that everyone went to on the mornings. Okay, now I’m thinking about one insane story. This is probably the best working kid’s story I know. But I had a kid who went to, she ended up going to Wash U. She graduated probably four or five years ago. She was a yoga instructor at this, at Core Power Yoga. that an Yep. Yeah, exactly. So she was a yoga instructor.

18:01
She did the yoga training. She was super into it. She ended up doing some social media stuff for them, just kind of because she took the initiative. She thought she was interested in business. She went to Wash U. She studied business and something else that I can’t remember right now. She got an investment bank. She kept teaching yoga with them because she loved it. It was her happy place. So she did it on the side. She got an investment banking job, Wall Street investment banking job, an elite boutique firm in New York City. She did it for two years.

18:30
decided no thank you. And then she was hired by the company to do strategy. Oh, that’s amazing. this relationship with them for now. I mean, she’s just a kid for like 10 years. And she got this like primo job with them. You know, like a really, really hard to get substantive strategy job for a woman owned company that’s growing. That’s awesome. Oh, I love that.

19:00
Is that core power? Yeah, amazing. Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, I mean, you never know where it’s going to lead you. And that’s the thing about work. You never know how it’s going to come back later. And honestly, just the fact that you have a job in high school, whatever that job is, it helps you get the next job, whatever it is, because they see that you’re responsible. And I’ve heard admissions people say, like, we want you to be responsible to somebody other than your parents. And that’s a really important thing. So getting a job is a very, very cool thing to do.

19:29
And then on the other side of that, we talked a little bit of internships and uh I’m gonna do a case study on that, but it’s also an opportunity to explore a potential career, a major. So if you can get an internship, that’s good, but just it’s important to know like what you’re actually doing in the internship because if you’re just, sometimes it’s good you’re observing, you’re seeing what other people are doing. Sometimes you can actually have an impact in the company. And so it really just depends on what it is and what you can take away from it.

19:58
But we’ve had students who have had some really good internships and they’ve taken some really nice things away from it. And then we talked at the beginning about like reconnecting with family and friends and just re-energizing that super important. So obviously summer camp is one, lot of families use the summer to travel back to their, if they’re living far away from other extended family, they can travel back and have that. We’ve had a lot of kids write about the summers in France or the summers in India or something.

20:28
where they have that reconnection. So that’s another way that people can use their summers. And again, it’s what you take from it as opposed to what you’re actually doing. Sometimes you just need to do nothing and that’s perfectly fine. I’m excited for summer now. want it to be. uh What are you going to do Steph? Our summers are now all filled with work. Essays. yeah, the warm weather and yeah, taking a little time off.

20:58
Yeah, our summer is May. Our summer is not even May anymore. It’s like a week of May. That’s right. So, all right. So now I think we’re going to move on to some case studies. I’m going to talk about a student that I worked with and Arun. We’re going to call him the curious geography-obsessed tennis instructor and volunteer. So before I get to the volunteer part, I want to talk about

21:28
who he is as a person. So you talk to him, he leads with curiosity for everything. He’s a student who’s senior year, he sat in a class, he had space in his schedule and he wasn’t even receiving credit for it just because he wanted to challenge himself and sit in that class. He actually ended up getting credit for it in the long run, but that’s the type of student he is. He just wants to learn, but he had this real…

21:53
uh healthy obsession with geography. He also loves tennis, which I’ll get into in a little bit. He founded a YouTube channel where he would post short videos about his passion for history and specifically about borders and how they were created, which was really intriguing. I learned a lot from him and he would create quizzes. He was a member of the school’s geography club. He did model UN and then his other real passion was tennis.

22:23
So he played tennis forever as a young kid. ended up being another great fun fact about him is that he was the captain of his varsity tennis team and they were top team in the state, but he was a doubles player. He wasn’t first singles, he wasn’t second singles, third singles. I know it works differently in different states and he still made so much impact even though he wasn’t the…

22:50
the best player on the team. So again, shows a lot about his character. And outside of school, he was a coach, he was an instructor, he coordinated match play for local tennis clubs. So he had a lot of interaction with students. The one thing though, that there was a bit of a gap on, even though he had so much to offer, he was really making impact in all his different communities, he didn’t have any volunteer work.

23:16
Again, even though he was this dedicated coach in his tennis world and he was helping in so many different ways, and this also really came from him, he didn’t really know how to give back and he was trying to navigate that and figure that out. So when we met junior year, the first thing that we kind of came upon together was tennis. Like there’s so much, I know Abby and Lisa was, they were talking about this before, especially with athletes as a way.

23:45
to spend their summers is to coach is to mentor is to volunteer. So we started to brainstorm of ways that he could give back to his local community. So he did that in a few ways. The first thing he did was acing autism. So he helped students on the autism spectrum learn how to play tennis and he really helped them develop social connections and

24:14
understand what fitness was and also help them with impulse control. There was a lot of one-on-one work with them. And then another thing that he did that was similar was love serving autism. And these programs, these ACing Autism and Love Serving Autism, they lasted several weeks and he would just do that kind of on the weekends. And then, but where he really found his footing,

24:40
meaning that he started to do that. He did this in the spring, he did this in the fall, he did this, he did this when the weather was nice in the summer and you could be outside playing all day. He did something in New Jersey called the Greater Newark Tennis and the Education Network. And he taught kids ages 19 to 18 in the Newark community how to play tennis. And…

25:04
He loved it so much that he started to maintain the rapport with these students outside of these 12 weeks. And he encouraged them to play in tennis tournaments. He took them to tennis tournaments. So it really became a part of his life. And I think a lot of times we think like, again, we started meeting when he was a junior, like, oh my gosh.

25:29
I’ve no community service. And it’s not like you should be doing community service to get into college. You should be doing service to your community because this is a part of who we are as people. We wanna give back. But sometimes we just don’t know how. But yeah, this is just who he is. The college he’s going to has acing autism. So he’s now doing that in college. So that’s really the scope of Varun. Yeah, I have a client who’s doing

25:57
does love serving autism as well and he really enjoys it. And I did not know about the Newark tennis one so I’m gonna have to add that to my list. I’m glad, thanks for sharing that. That’s great. All right, so I’m going to talk about Alex who is the Renaissance man engineer. He is someone who has multiple interests and talents. He is a really strong guitar player and he also loves thinking about problem solving and engineering related issues. But he was also

26:25
equally fascinated by big philosophical questions. He used his summers really to get, he did research in high school. So while he was in school, his school had a research component to it. So he was able to do research and enter various science fairs, et cetera. And then he used his summer to get real world engineering experience by working at a prototyping lab. And he actually developed a guitar that would light up and help new musicians learn how to do chords.

26:53
because he knew that that was one of the hard things that when you were learning to play the guitar, you didn’t actually know where to put your fingers. And so he tried to figure out, how could you make that easier? So he created, he was in this organization or this like a prototyping lab and he was given the task to create a new product, like come up with a new idea. So he thought, well, I love to the guitar and I love engineering and tinkering and things.

27:20
So how do I make that easier for someone to learn? So he created this guitar that had LED lights underneath it, and so that you would push a cord and then it would show you exactly where to place your fingers on the guitar. And so it was a really cool way to teach new guitar players how to do that. So that was something that he did and he really enjoyed that. And then the following summer, he interned at a company that made lithium batteries. And so that was building upon his engineering.

27:50
And then he was also interested in sustainability and how mechanical engineering could create more efficient motors. Also how naval engineering uses water, how to make engines that work within water, within sustainability. So all of those things kind of helped him think about that stuff. And then the other big thing that he did over the summer was because he was interested in music, he did a summer program at Berkeley.

28:17
And he wasn’t necessarily going to school for music, but it was definitely a complimentary angle to his application. And he did really want to continue to participate in that. So he did a summer program at Berkeley. And then he also was interested in service. And so his school ran a program to help refugee children over the summer. And he did it all three summers while he was in his high school.

28:43
And he started off as a teacher and then he moved on to become an advanced leader by his last summer. So he was really strategic in using his summers to show all of the different sides of him. So sort of like the engineering career side of him, the service side where he’s helping people learn, and then also becoming a leader within that, and then also going deep in his music and then the crossover between bringing music and engineering together. And then he ended up going to Michigan for engineering. So that’s where he is right now.

29:13
That’s so impressive that he. did a lot. Yeah, he was a very interesting young man. He is very interesting young man. He had a lot of a lot of interests, which I think made him that much more fascinating. And he liked to see how things connected. So that was kind of cool. Amazing.

29:34
So, if you want to talk to us a little bit about if you’re interested in business, because we had sort of the service person, we had the engineering music person. Maybe you can talk about some ideas for business students, what they might be able to do. Yeah, I think I’ll talk about one specific business student and then quickly talk about a few others and how they approached it because.

29:56
Business isn’t something that’s so easy for high school students to access, right? Like what business wants a 17 year old’s help, you know, in any real uh sort of business way, finance, accounting, investments, you know, some kids get lucky with the connection through their parents or, you know, sometimes by their own initiative, but it’s really kind of tough. Most high schools don’t teach, you know, it’s hard to take a business class. You can take economics maybe, but it’s hard to get exposure, I would say to business.

30:25
before you get to college. So yeah, I think it’s worth talking about how some kids have done it. So the one young woman I wanna talk about, she uh had an interest, two very specific interests, one in entrepreneurship. She was just kind of one of those people who wanted to do her own thing. She always knew that. And also kind of global community service. So…

30:51
She did two things simultaneously in ninth grade. She started doing these trips with this company called Moon Dance Adventures, where she would travel for two weeks over the summer and do a very intensive community service project. she did something with coral reefs. I mean, these were more intense and more immersive than a lot, like a lot of hard work, challenging. ah So you’re either that person or you’re not. But she started doing that and then she also started her own jewelry business.

31:18
just making beaded jewelry, selling it online, and she would give a percentage of her profits away, which is a nice, lovely thing to do, but not that earth shattering. So as she got older, she kept doing the same thing. So summer after sophomore year, she did the exact same thing. Then summer after junior year, she went to Georgetown for their entrepreneurship program. She specifically

31:45
targeted that one because there’s an element of social impact to it. So social impact entrepreneurship. And there she actually really learned what it meant. So it’s funny, cause a lot of business schools when you’re applying to the undergrad program, they’ll say, what’s a business issue that has a social component that you’re interested. But, know, that’s a hard question. That’s a very complex world. And she actually took a class and really got a deep understanding of what

32:14
ah Non-profit you know how to organize nonprofit the difference between for profit nonprofit i mean she really really learned a lot and became very committed to this idea of starting a company with a social component. ah was super believable given that all of her sort of stuff came together she read a book that she literally was life changing i can’t remember the name of the book but was life changing for her at that program.

32:39
She contacted the author and had sort of correspondences with him. She was really a go-getter. Anyway, she ended up going to Georgetown. That was her first choice, Business School. One of the reasons is because their entrepreneurship program is really focused on social impact versus at Babson or some other places where it’s not, that’s accessible, but Georgetown’s is really focused on that. So that was a perfect fit for her and she ended up going there.

33:05
That’s one example of someone I’ve had business kids do all kinds of things. honestly, know, the few kids that I’m about to mention now went to all the same sort of level of business school, you know, level of selectivity. So I’ve had kids, as I mentioned, take uh Coursera or edX classes. There’s one specific one that a lot of my kids have done on Coursera called Financial Markets. It’s a Yale class.

33:32
There’s also introduction to corporate finance given by Penn. um You know, they’re really high quality classes. So last summer I had a kid do financial markets and also work on building his own business. He wanted to be an entrepreneur, but nothing to do with social impact. He created a golf related product with two friends and they developed it, came up with a prototype, did a business plan.

34:00
um Got some investors from family friends, but, but pitched it worked really hard pitching it to golf clubs to public golf courses to individuals to stores and they actually did. Pretty decently in sales that kid ended up he was an athlete. He was a golfer. He ended up going to Notre Dame for business. He got into Georgetown too though. And then another um young man went to the Wharton program, the finance program there.

34:29
And did some amazing work. mean, that’s a pretty robust program. It’s it’s selective. I’m not sure how selective it is, because I’ve never had a kid not get in. But anyway, he ended up doing evaluation of an energy company and presenting it to an, you know, a panel of professors. That was a very valuable experience for him because he literally learned how to do part of what you learn how to do as a first year analyst at an investment bank. So then when he went.

34:57
you interviewing for investment banks afterwards he really had something to talk about you know i had a kid work at a hardware store who did the same thing as that young woman yoga he got involved in the books he started you know doing some accounting for them and also you know the that hardware store kinda came up on some hard times and he helped with kind of marketing and analyzing margins on certain products for them so they could.

35:25
be more profitable in terms of their what they were carrying. So let me see if there’s any other kids. So online classes, college classes, working on building your own business or creating your own business, getting a job, having an internship. I’ve had kids have internships at like investment companies. I mean, obviously that’s sort of through connections. And to your point earlier, Lisa, that can be a really rich experience or it can be nothing.

35:55
And I would say putting the name of an investment company on your resume means nothing if you have nothing to talk about, you know, what you did or what you learned. You know, it’s not going to impress anybody that you ran errands at some investment company. think another thing to think about for business is that it doesn’t always have to be sort of like business related. Like I’ve had students who have run theater camps or run the backstage of theater or been the stage manager.

36:23
or I had a student who worked at a very busy ice cream store all throughout high school. That was really her primary activity, but she was working many hours. She moved up into becoming a manager. So in the summer she worked more and she oh used that to say like all the different things that came with it because not only was she serving ice cream, it was during COVID. So she had to figure out operations.

36:52
How do you get that many people through the door when you’ve got limited capacity? Then it was all throughout high school, so then things opened up. Then she had to train new employees that were starting, so she had to do that. Some of the workers there, that was their primary job. So she saw economic inequity and how do you manage that? And so she ended up going to uh Cornell Hotel School. And I think the question was, what type of a business student are you? And everything that she did in that job,

37:20
she started to see things in so many different ways. She started to see business in a multi-layered way where it wasn’t just making money, but it was serving a community. It was understanding how to manage human resources. was understanding operations. I one time had a student who was, he did a lot of work at a soup kitchen and he was the guy who was serving everybody and kind of deploying the different people that were serving people. So we talked again about operations and how he thinks about it as operations and like, how do you get

37:50
All of these people through the door in a way that makes them feel welcome and you know with dignity. So again, those are all things that you could learn. There’s a lot of ways that you can apply. Non typically business things to business. So lots of ways that you can you can get at business. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean all of those things demonstrate leadership, strategic thinking, problem solving, all characteristics that.

38:18
undergraduate business programs are looking at. What I will say is that when it comes time to apply to college and you’re gonna say, I’m interested in business, you have to have something to say. I mean, there’s so many different ways Lisa’s point of just getting involved in some kind of organization and taking on additional responsibility that does it um or taking a class. are billions of business podcasts

38:48
that you could binge. Sometimes I would say I get students who, you know, are like, I’m interested in business, I want to apply to business school. And I’m like, okay, what what sparked that business? I don’t know, my parents are in business or, you know, have you done anything? No, no, I don’t know. I think you need to have sort of explored it in some fashion, whether traditional or not in a traditional way, but just some kind of organizational

39:16
leadership experience before, you you have to have something behind it, I think anyway. Right. And if you’re not sure, then that might be a really good way to use your summer is to take one of those pre-college business programs to get exposure to it and understand what goes into various types of business. I mean, there’s so many different pre-college programs that are available for students to take advantage of. So, yeah.

39:41
I’ve had a bunch of kids do sports marketing also. didn’t mention that. Same. I was kids doing sports marketing. And so, yeah, it just gives you exposure so that you understand and make the connection to something personal, which is also really helpful. right. Anything else that we want to talk about before we wrap this up? Start thinking about summer now. This is the time to look at programs that open up. This is the time to

40:10
think about how you want to spend your summer, whether it’s camp, whether it’s a job, whether it’s applying for a certain program at a college. So it’s not too early. It might feel like it is, but it’s not. So you should be having those thoughtful conversations now. That’s a really good point. And also some of the more competitive programs, the application deadline could be January 1st and sometimes even earlier than that.

40:35
uh So that’s also something to just be really mindful of that you’re going to have to use this time right now to write those competitive applications for having that like early January. Sometimes you have to be nominated by a guidance counselor, like if you’re doing like the governor’s school for your state or some of these other competitive programs and those applications sneak up on you. So it’s good to get started with that. As a rule, most of them are probably closer to March.

41:03
but there are definitely somewhere it’s January 1st or even mid December. Yeah, I think some of the competitive like highly effective engineering ones are in December. And like I think you started to touch on this Lisa, they’re very writing intensive. A lot of them require multiple essays. Right, so get your chops out now and start getting in a good position for when you have to write your regular college apps.

41:29
So that’s also definitely something you wanna just get going on right now, which is why we wanted to, even though it seems like Thanksgiving’s not even here yet, it’s time to start thinking about summer. All right, well, thank you, CBMers, for tuning in and thank you for um listening. To catch more episodes of College Bell Mentor, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com. Until next time, you got this.