Among the thousands of personal appeals on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, you’ll find a 2017 campaign for a young woman named Kirstin, a then high school junior with wavy light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smile that hints at suppressed excitement.
“Kirstin’s Invited to Stanford!” the page, created by Kirstin’s aunt, declares. “My 16-year-old niece has been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. After working hard her entire school career to achieve a goal, she has done it!”
Check out the complete 2019 Washington Monthly rankings here. Kirstin, it turns out, was not admitted as an undergraduate, but was raising funds for an “Intensive Law & Trial” summer program offered on the Stanford University campus. Tuition for the ten-day program runs to $4,095, not including airfare and pocket money. “Stanford, one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, is impressed enough with her to have invited her to this program in Palo Alto, California this summer,” the post continues. “Her extended family is trying hard to raise the deposit of $800.00 by week’s end so this opportunity does not slip through her fingers.”
Search “pre-college” on GoFundMe.com and you’ll find dozens of similar campaigns from hopeful students dazzled by the allure of two weeks on an elite campus. “Going to the Summer @ Brown PreCollege Program would give me a preview of what life would be like if I attend the school of my dreams,” reads a 2018 campaign by Benjina, from Newark, New Jersey. “This program will give me the experience of a lifetime,” writes Yakeleen, a high schooler from Tucson, Arizona, hoping to raise $2,200 to attend Harvard’s pre-college program. “Coming from a low income background while being a first generation student, this is a grand oppurtunity [sic] I intend on taking advantage of.”
These posts reflect the growing trend of summer “pre-college” programs at the nation’s most prestigious universities. Stanford, which launched its “pre-collegiate studies” program in 2012, hosts three-week summer sessions for high schoolers with course options on more than fifty different subjects, in addition to the mock trial program Kirstin hoped to attend. Similar programs abound at other elite institutions. In fact, of the top forty schools ranked in U.S. News & World Report, all but one—Dartmouth—offer some sort of summer program for high school students (and, in some cases, even middle schoolers). “More and more colleges and universities are offering short-term on-campus programs that offer a taste of what life would be like at their institution,” reports the International Association for College Admission Counseling.
These programs can offer precocious teens an enriching, hands-on preview of college life. But they also exploit both the allure of brand-name universities and families’ anxieties about an increasingly cutthroat college admissions process in which “summer experiences” matter. While even ambitious teens once spent their summers scooping ice cream or lazing by the pool, they now choose from a dizzying array of summer options, including trips to every corner of the planet and camps in every subject from robotics to equestrianism. “Admissions officers want to see that students are spending at least a few of their weeks productively during the summer,” said Andrew Belasco, CEO of the college advising firm College Transitions.
The popularity of summer pre-college programs suggests that many kids and parents see them as a good way to get a leg up on college admissions. And many universities, including Columbia and Johns Hopkins, explicitly encourage that belief. But admissions experts I spoke to were unanimous that, when it comes to getting into college, the benefits of most pre-college programs are negligible. The big winners, rather, are the schools themselves, who use pre-college programs to generate millions of dollars in revenue while relying on marketing practices that oversell the programs’ benefits, including elaborate admissions processes that imply a misleading degree of selectivity.
And while the target demographic is most likely the sort of upper-middle-class family that can afford expensive private university education, it’s clear that the universities are consciously drawing in families who struggle to afford the programs’ high costs. Some schools, including Stanford, distribute “fundraising guides” encouraging students to solicit contributions, including through crowdsourcing sites like GoFundMe. “With successful planning, creativity and resilience, students have worked with their community to achieve the goal of funding,” Stanford’s guide reads. “This is a great opportunity to gain leadership skills and connect to your community.”
For Kirstin’s family, creativity appears to have taken the form of debt. “We came up short but Kirstin saved and raised $650.00 on her own,” her aunt wrote in an update posted July 2017. “Brian and I put the balance of her tuition on credit because we are not letting this pass her by.” (...)
College admissions experts say that for many families, these experiences aren’t worth the often very hefty price tags. Harvard’s pre-college program costs $4,600 for a two-week session, while Brown charges $2,776 for one week and $6,976 for a four-week version.
One reason these programs don’t blow the socks off admissions officers is that they don’t reflect either the academic rigor or the selective admissions of the institutions that host them. Many pre-college programs are run by separate departments within a university (often the school of professional studies), or even by an outside company, and so have no connection to undergraduate education or admissions.
Among the private, for-profit companies that run pre-college programs is Envision, a subsidiary of the global educational travel company WorldStrides. In addition to programs at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Yale, Rice, Georgia Tech, and other schools, Envision runs the Stanford-based mock trial program that was the subject of Kirstin’s GoFundMe campaign. Although that program hires Stanford Law School faculty to help teach some classes, the fine print on the Envision site notes, “This cultural excursion is not affiliated with Stanford Law School in any way.” It is, in other words, a side hustle for Stanford professors. Children “invited” to attend are invited by the company, which also runs the admissions process, not by Stanford Law. Likewise with Envision’s “Global Young Leaders Conference,” a ten-day excursion costing $3,095 that includes embassy visits, a tour of D.C., and “real world simulations” that seem very much like what one would do in a high school Model United Nations. Like the mock trial program, the application process is managed entirely by the company, although college credit is offered through George Mason University. (...)
While some programs require a minimum GPA, the standard tends to be forgiving. Johns Hopkins, for example, where the average high school GPA of incoming freshmen is 3.93, requires only a 3.0 minimum GPA for its summer “immersion” program ($2,575, one week, no college credit). “Most of our programs are not super selective,” said Liz Ringel, chief marketing officer for Summer Discovery, a company that runs pre-college programs on fourteen campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, and other top-tier institutions. “We want to make sure that students are in good academic standing, they haven’t been expelled, they don’t have any disciplinary action against them, and they are going to enjoy the experience on campus.”
Ultimately, schools may be less interested in a student’s academic brilliance than in their ability to pay. Among the college admissions consultants I interviewed, the consensus was that a primary purpose of these pre-college summer programs is making money. “Colleges are businesses, and one of the reasons they run summer programs is because they have all of these empty dorm rooms that ideally they could fill with people and make use of the resources that are already there,” said Bright Horizons’ Heaton. In 2015, a Brown University administrator told the campus newspaper that the school’s summer program had brought in $6 million that year, 70 percent of which was essentially profit. “The summer program,” the paper reported, “is one of several efforts administrators have made in recent years to diversify the University’s revenue streams and reduce its reliance on undergraduate tuition.”
“Kirstin’s Invited to Stanford!” the page, created by Kirstin’s aunt, declares. “My 16-year-old niece has been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. After working hard her entire school career to achieve a goal, she has done it!”
Check out the complete 2019 Washington Monthly rankings here. Kirstin, it turns out, was not admitted as an undergraduate, but was raising funds for an “Intensive Law & Trial” summer program offered on the Stanford University campus. Tuition for the ten-day program runs to $4,095, not including airfare and pocket money. “Stanford, one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, is impressed enough with her to have invited her to this program in Palo Alto, California this summer,” the post continues. “Her extended family is trying hard to raise the deposit of $800.00 by week’s end so this opportunity does not slip through her fingers.”Search “pre-college” on GoFundMe.com and you’ll find dozens of similar campaigns from hopeful students dazzled by the allure of two weeks on an elite campus. “Going to the Summer @ Brown PreCollege Program would give me a preview of what life would be like if I attend the school of my dreams,” reads a 2018 campaign by Benjina, from Newark, New Jersey. “This program will give me the experience of a lifetime,” writes Yakeleen, a high schooler from Tucson, Arizona, hoping to raise $2,200 to attend Harvard’s pre-college program. “Coming from a low income background while being a first generation student, this is a grand oppurtunity [sic] I intend on taking advantage of.”
These posts reflect the growing trend of summer “pre-college” programs at the nation’s most prestigious universities. Stanford, which launched its “pre-collegiate studies” program in 2012, hosts three-week summer sessions for high schoolers with course options on more than fifty different subjects, in addition to the mock trial program Kirstin hoped to attend. Similar programs abound at other elite institutions. In fact, of the top forty schools ranked in U.S. News & World Report, all but one—Dartmouth—offer some sort of summer program for high school students (and, in some cases, even middle schoolers). “More and more colleges and universities are offering short-term on-campus programs that offer a taste of what life would be like at their institution,” reports the International Association for College Admission Counseling.
These programs can offer precocious teens an enriching, hands-on preview of college life. But they also exploit both the allure of brand-name universities and families’ anxieties about an increasingly cutthroat college admissions process in which “summer experiences” matter. While even ambitious teens once spent their summers scooping ice cream or lazing by the pool, they now choose from a dizzying array of summer options, including trips to every corner of the planet and camps in every subject from robotics to equestrianism. “Admissions officers want to see that students are spending at least a few of their weeks productively during the summer,” said Andrew Belasco, CEO of the college advising firm College Transitions.
The popularity of summer pre-college programs suggests that many kids and parents see them as a good way to get a leg up on college admissions. And many universities, including Columbia and Johns Hopkins, explicitly encourage that belief. But admissions experts I spoke to were unanimous that, when it comes to getting into college, the benefits of most pre-college programs are negligible. The big winners, rather, are the schools themselves, who use pre-college programs to generate millions of dollars in revenue while relying on marketing practices that oversell the programs’ benefits, including elaborate admissions processes that imply a misleading degree of selectivity.
And while the target demographic is most likely the sort of upper-middle-class family that can afford expensive private university education, it’s clear that the universities are consciously drawing in families who struggle to afford the programs’ high costs. Some schools, including Stanford, distribute “fundraising guides” encouraging students to solicit contributions, including through crowdsourcing sites like GoFundMe. “With successful planning, creativity and resilience, students have worked with their community to achieve the goal of funding,” Stanford’s guide reads. “This is a great opportunity to gain leadership skills and connect to your community.”
For Kirstin’s family, creativity appears to have taken the form of debt. “We came up short but Kirstin saved and raised $650.00 on her own,” her aunt wrote in an update posted July 2017. “Brian and I put the balance of her tuition on credit because we are not letting this pass her by.” (...)
College admissions experts say that for many families, these experiences aren’t worth the often very hefty price tags. Harvard’s pre-college program costs $4,600 for a two-week session, while Brown charges $2,776 for one week and $6,976 for a four-week version.
One reason these programs don’t blow the socks off admissions officers is that they don’t reflect either the academic rigor or the selective admissions of the institutions that host them. Many pre-college programs are run by separate departments within a university (often the school of professional studies), or even by an outside company, and so have no connection to undergraduate education or admissions.
Among the private, for-profit companies that run pre-college programs is Envision, a subsidiary of the global educational travel company WorldStrides. In addition to programs at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Yale, Rice, Georgia Tech, and other schools, Envision runs the Stanford-based mock trial program that was the subject of Kirstin’s GoFundMe campaign. Although that program hires Stanford Law School faculty to help teach some classes, the fine print on the Envision site notes, “This cultural excursion is not affiliated with Stanford Law School in any way.” It is, in other words, a side hustle for Stanford professors. Children “invited” to attend are invited by the company, which also runs the admissions process, not by Stanford Law. Likewise with Envision’s “Global Young Leaders Conference,” a ten-day excursion costing $3,095 that includes embassy visits, a tour of D.C., and “real world simulations” that seem very much like what one would do in a high school Model United Nations. Like the mock trial program, the application process is managed entirely by the company, although college credit is offered through George Mason University. (...)
While some programs require a minimum GPA, the standard tends to be forgiving. Johns Hopkins, for example, where the average high school GPA of incoming freshmen is 3.93, requires only a 3.0 minimum GPA for its summer “immersion” program ($2,575, one week, no college credit). “Most of our programs are not super selective,” said Liz Ringel, chief marketing officer for Summer Discovery, a company that runs pre-college programs on fourteen campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, and other top-tier institutions. “We want to make sure that students are in good academic standing, they haven’t been expelled, they don’t have any disciplinary action against them, and they are going to enjoy the experience on campus.”
Ultimately, schools may be less interested in a student’s academic brilliance than in their ability to pay. Among the college admissions consultants I interviewed, the consensus was that a primary purpose of these pre-college summer programs is making money. “Colleges are businesses, and one of the reasons they run summer programs is because they have all of these empty dorm rooms that ideally they could fill with people and make use of the resources that are already there,” said Bright Horizons’ Heaton. In 2015, a Brown University administrator told the campus newspaper that the school’s summer program had brought in $6 million that year, 70 percent of which was essentially profit. “The summer program,” the paper reported, “is one of several efforts administrators have made in recent years to diversify the University’s revenue streams and reduce its reliance on undergraduate tuition.”
by Anne Kim, Washington Monthly | Read more:
Image: Chris Matthews
