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This summer, Chinese children have once again filled American summer schools.

Summer school refers to the academic courses offered by overseas universities for local and international students every summer. Some junior high schools and high schools also offer summer camps for younger children. According to feedback from many students and parents, the proportion of Chinese children in such programs has been growing rapidly in recent years.

Especially for summer schools run by famous universities, since there are certain application requirements,After admission, you can study and live in a prestigious school for a period ranging from one week to several weeks., often appear to be more formal and provide better experience than some third-party programs, and are usually considered to be more useful for further studies, so they are more sought after by domestic families.

Behind the tens of thousands of yuan spent, are schools really doing education, or are they treating summer school as a business? What parents are eager to give their children is the experience and knowledge of international education, or the anxiety of finding a "shortcut to further education"?

Summer school “conquered” by Chinese

Helen, who is from a bilingual high school in Shanghai, attended the Berkeley Summer Sessions at the University of California, Berkeley during the summer vacation between her freshman and sophomore year.

According to Helen, since her astronomy course is taught in small classes, the students in the class are easy to identify.Nearly half of the 20-odd people were from China.，Everyone understood each other tacitly in class, and after class we could get together and chat and speak Chinese.

"To be honest, for a few of us Chinese students, I clearly feel that most of the summer school courses are not very difficult. Everyone is here with the mentality of 'cultural exchange' to experience American culture in advance and then try to get a letter of recommendation for college application. I am no exception."

The experience Helen is talking about is certainly not cheap. The current cost of Berkeley's six-week residential summer program, including room and board, is $14,500, about RMB 100,000, plus airfare and living expenses after the soaring prices in the United States.One and a half months later, it cost more than 100,000 yuan。

To make a horizontal comparison, Helen's bilingual school in Shanghai charges around 200,000 yuan a year in tuition.This six-week American summer school cost me almost half a year's tuition。

Before the class, Helen was in awe of the difficulty of the course because of Berkeley's reputation. It was only after the class started that she noticed thatThe teacher of the class was not the expected Berkeley professor, but a doctoral student in astronomy.

“Although this teacher was very nice and patient in answering questions, when I later chatted with several students from China, they all felt that the teacher’s teaching was average.”

The situation that Chinese students occupy half of the summer schools also occurs in the summer schools of many popular and prestigious schools in the United States. According to feedback from many students and parents:

This is not only true for popular summer schools. According to feedback from many students, the top summer school programs Notre Dame Leadership Seminars, SHI (Stanford Human Institute), LBW (Leadership in the Business World), which have been known for being difficult to apply for and having few Chinese students admitted in previous years,The number of Chinese students has increased significantly, and there is no longer a situation where I am the only Chinese student in the entire project.

It is worth mentioning that while Chinese children make up an overwhelming number of students in American summer schools, the remaining American students are also mostly Chinese.After all, when it comes to spending money on their children's education, Chinese people all over the world are very united.

A student who participated in Duke University's TIP program shared with us that during group discussions in summer school, the Chinese students' speeches were very consistent in content, such as how they overcame difficulties to practice public speaking and debate and won awards, or how they trained the violin to shine in school performances. This makes people sigh at the common characteristics of Chinese people's hard work.

In this course, almost all students received high marks on their final transcripts, but no one received a letter of recommendation from the teacher.Because the teacher said on the first day of class that I will only be with you for two weeks, which is too short for us to write a sincere letter of recommendation for any of you.

Is summer school really a shortcut to higher education?

Now, if you search for "summer school" on Xiaohongshu and various media platforms, you will immediately see a large number of eye-catching headlines: "Recommendations for high-quality summer schools", "Must-have summer schools for Ivy League students", and there are even study abroad influencers who say in videos without any reservation, "Once you get into this top program, you have one foot in Harvard, Yale, and Principal."

This summer, Kevin's mother, who enrolled her child in the University of Chicago's credit summer school, learned about this program through a recommendation on a study abroad agency's official account.

According to her, as soon as the first year of high school started at the international department of her child's high school, the school's admissions teacher began asking each child what their plans for the future were, what activities they wanted to do, and whether they would attend summer school.

"I was actually very confused because I didn't know anything about summer school. But when I saw that Kevin's classmates were all preparing to go, some were applying, and some had already received an offer, I thought if Kevin didn't go, he would fall behind."

The situation described by Kevin's mother is very common in the top overseas schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. A large number of families, under the persuasion of college guidance and study abroad consultants,I have already regarded summer school as a “must-have material” in college applications.

But most of them have little understanding of the specific situation of summer school.

"When I was doing homework for my child, I found that there were too many names for summer schools. Some were called Pre-College, some were called Summer Session, and some were called Program. Some had credits and some didn't. I had no idea which one was better." Recalling the experience of helping her child choose a summer school, Kevin's mother said frankly that she felt "dizzy."

Kevin's mother admitted that she finally chose the University of Chicago's credit summer school because it had a high TOEFL score requirement (recommended 104 points or above) and seemed to be more rigorous academically. She asked the study abroad agency and it was rated well, so she let her child apply. Unexpectedly, he was accepted immediately. After the class, she asked her child what he learned, but he couldn't say anything special, just that the campus was beautiful, and he was still confused about the major he would apply for in the future.

We also noticed thatJust like the "Little Red Book traffic-generating posts", there are also an increasing number of parents' complaints about the effectiveness of summer schools online.

For example, a mother who had gone through the previous application process complained that she spent nearly $200,000 to have her child attend two summer school programs at top 20 schools in grades 10 and 11. However, the application did not receive any extra points.I still received rejection letters from these two schools in the RD round.

Summer school is not a life-saving straw for climbing the Ivy League ladder. This fact that has always existed but is often overlooked is gradually beginning to be noticed by parents after the "fever" has subsided.

Raymond Ravagli, former vice president of Stanford University's Pre-College Program and founder of the world's first gifted online high school, Stanford Online High School, once said in an interview with The Washington Post:

The director of Harvard University's summer school program once publicly stated in an interview with the school newspaper that every year too many students apply for Harvard's summer programs open to high school students, but these programs will not have any effect on undergraduate admissions.

The Yale Young Global Scholars Program (YYGS) has also made it clear that admission to the YYGS summer school has nothing to do with admission to Yale University.

Many parents are often instilled with the idea that "if my child participates in the summer program of the dream school and performs well, he will definitely have an advantage in applying to the dream school in the future, and every university wants him."

The reality is that summer programs at dream schools are often pretty average and not at all “dreamlike,” and all college admissions officers know this.

Because the college students have gone home for the summer vacation, the professors have no teaching tasks, so the more capable ones are either on vacation or doing their own research.After all, summer school is a profit-making project and costs need to be controlled, so it is not surprising that many courses are usually taught by graduate students and doctoral students on campus.

Precisely because the courses are not very valuable, admissions officers naturally think that it is not uncommon to perform well in summer school, and naturally will not give preferential treatment during admissions.

More and more cases have proven thatAdmission to American summer schools has nothing to do with admission to American universities. The vast majority of summer schools have almost no direct bonus points for admission.

Of course, if a child is admitted to a top summer program, such as RSI or TASP, the child's chances of being admitted to his or her dream school do increase. We can also see that the children admitted to these programs generally have good application results.

But please note thatThe application and selection process for these so-called "top-level, high-quality" summer schools is already very complicated and strict. Students must submit school transcripts, teacher recommendation letters, activity/award lists, and write several application essays on different topics, describing their various experiences and why they want to participate in this program.Some programs also require students to submit regular papers or personal projects written entirely in English, and also require teacher evaluations.

Applying for such a top program is actually a preview of applying for a US college. The children who are admitted to these programs only prove that they are already very capable. So when the future university admissions officers see that the children have attended such a highly selective summer school, they will know that they are likely to be very capable and have gone through a rigorous screening process.

Prestigious schools admit these students not because of the quality of their summer schools, but because they themselves are excellent.

From this perspective, "Ivy League climbing magic tools" and "one foot into Harvard, Yale and Harvard" are nothing more than marketing rhetoric of institutions, and the behavior of following the trend and rushing to attend summer schools is often just an "arms race" without practical significance.

Under the above premise, the more common way to judge the so-called "value" of summer schools is:The earlier the application deadline, the more application materials are required, the higher the application threshold, the higher the qualifications of the instructor, and the higher the value.

If you can go just by paying money, then the quality of the school is bound to be insufficient. If you have to go through layers of screening and submit a lot of materials to prove your grades and abilities, and the college admissions of students who have participated in the past have all been good, then it is likely that this summer school is of a good level. Regardless of whether you have credits or letters of recommendation, at least your child can learn something real when you go there.

A truly good program has nothing to do with tuition fees or whether the sponsor is an Ivy League school.For example, the Clark Scholar Program hosted by Texas Tech University lasts for seven weeks. The research fields cover humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Room and board are free, and there is no tuition. The program also provides students with a stipend of $750. Twelve students will be admitted in 2022, with an admission rate of less than 2% (1% in 2020). It is said that one Chinese student has been selected in the past three years.

Should I still attend summer school?

Speaking of this, many parents must be stuck in the dilemma of "not being able to get admitted to good programs, and not having to go to ordinary programs."

Before we debate whether to go to summer school or not, we should first ask ourselves another question: What role does summer school play in applying to American colleges?

Simply put, summer school is an important supplement to one's application activities, but it is not the basis for one's application activities. Before supplementing your application, you should ask yourself whether you have laid a good foundation in several aspects:

1. Have your standardized test scores reached or will reach the bottom line of your target school?

Since summer school is an important supplement to application activities, no one can be admitted based on application activities alone.Applicants need at least one satisfactory standardized test score.So the first question is whether the standardized test scores have or will reach the bottom line of the target school.

You should know that many credit-based summer schools last as long as six to eight weeks. If your standardized test scores are far from meeting the standards, it would be better to use this time to study hard and raise your scores so that they can be more helpful in your application.

2. Can summer school successfully play an important supplementary role in your main application?

Assuming that you have achieved or expect to achieve satisfactory standardized test scores, you can focus on improving your activities. What is the main line of your application? Will the summer school you are going to be an important supplement to this main line of activities? Why or why not? Even if it is just a credit project, can what you learn from this project help build other activities and complete the establishment of the entire profile?

3. In addition to this main application line, are there any other important supplementary options?

For example, an applicant who is interested in journalism and media may be able to use the summer vacation to do an in-depth interview with the grassroots people. For example, in the past two years, some students conducted online interviews with international students in quarantine points, collecting the similarities and differences of various quarantine points, the feelings of quarantined international students and their experiences on the way back home, and the similarities and differences of quarantine measures in various places. At the same time, they used these to successfully apply for online internships at well-known newspapers. Will these real hands-on practical activities be less effective than attending a high-quality journalism summer school (such as the summer school of Northwestern Journalism School)?

Summer school is a common way to demonstrate one's passion, commitment, and current achievements in a certain subject. Some top summer schools are even the most direct and powerful way. However, this does not mean that summer school is the only effective way for a high school student to demonstrate his or her passion, commitment, and current achievements in a certain subject.

If you decide to attend a summer school, in addition to choosing based on "value", there are actually many other things worth considering to make a summer school more fulfilling and meaningful, such as:

First, what do you want to get from summer school?, there is a rough prediction, which can be abstract and macro things, such as: experiencing the learning atmosphere, adapting to cultural shock... It can also be specific and down-to-earth, such as: asking for a professor's recommendation letter, getting an excellent GPA for the project...

Secondly, understand your child’s strengths and weaknesses, can summer school play a complementary or assisting role: if the child is very interested in a certain field, choose a summer school that offers related majors; if you want to improve your language and adaptability through summer school, choose a program with fewer Chinese children...

Finally, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of the summer school you applied for.: How much of the program is for fun and how much is for learning? Can the child bear the academic intensity of the program? Can the summer school provide the various needs? Consult friends who have applied for the program and ask about their feelings and thoughts; find an institution to ask whether past students and consultants with similar experiences can provide matching information and news.

Just like studying, not all students’ summer school experiences are wonderful and smooth. Many cultural and life path confusions and bewilderments will follow.But without exception, those students who know exactly what they want from the beginning tend to gain more, regardless of whether they are in places with more or fewer children in the country.

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