Your junior summer is your last summer of high school, but also the first real step towards college. This is the last time you’ll be able to truly affect your college application: what you do in your summer should build on your extracurricular activities so that you can show colleges a true narrative of who you are and what you’re interested in.
Your Experience
You want to think about your summer as building off of an already existing interest. When you apply to college, you want to show that you are very serious about whatever your passion is. To that end, we find jobs, internships, and independent projects to be the most productive use of your time.
If you’re working–maybe as a lifeguard or barista–that’s great. Admission committees love when students have jobs. Job experience shows that you’re dependable; that someone saw fit to employ (and pay!) you to help out. A full-time job is perfect for your junior summer, and even more perfect if it lines up with your experiences and desired field of study.
Internships can be a great way to get practical experience, but you want to make sure you don’t just take any internship. If you’re going to be sitting around and getting coffee, you’re better off doing something else. You want an internship that is a logical extension of a pre-existing interest.
If you can’t find an internship for whatever reason, maybe you can work with one of your teachers to conduct an independent research project, or take online courses to supplement your classroom learning. If you’re an aspiring computer science major, push yourself through Harvard’s CS50. If you’d like to study history, take Yale’s excellent course on France since 1871.
If you’re more independent-minded, work with one of your teachers to develop an experiment or project in your free time. Just do something, anything, that pushes forward your narrative, that shows colleges that you’re committed to learning.
Your Application
The second focus of your summer should be on–you guessed it–your college application. If your college list isn’t finalized yet, finish it up before August. As always, try to visit as many schools as possible on your list.
Your first main focus should be on developing and crafting a common app narrative. Read through our sample admissions essays and take notes on everything you liked and didn’t like about the narratives. We suggest writing your essay to tackle the open-ended prompt, so try to think creatively about the different stories of your life.
Common App essays don’t have to be based on enormous undertakings or huge achievements: you can write about something as simple as a recipe, as long as you write your essay well.
Read through our posts on brainstorming and starting your essay, and remember to be creative whenever possible. You want your essay to stand out in the crowd, to identify you as unique.
Try to wrap your Common App essay up by August 1st so that you have the next months to work on the school-specific supplements. We always have the bulk of our student’s supplements done by the time they start school. There are so many deadlines and unexpected bumps that tend to come up senior year that it is always best to start the year off with as much done as possible.
If you have any further questions, or would like to discuss your junior year summer with us, please feel free to reach out to us here.