Summer Activities

Choose your activities purposefully. Think about your interests and your passions. Are you on the rowing team? Maybe there’s a camp that could use you as a volunteer. Love to read and think you might pursue a degree in education? Maybe your church can help you find a tutoring job in center for needy kids. Consider a summer course at a nearby college. Most importantly, use this time to reflect on your interests and pursue them. Think quality over quantity and reassess your activities for the school year if necessary, taking on leadership roles in the areas you love and perhaps scaling back on the activities you don’t.

Begin Your Research

Get yourself a copy of the latest edition of Fiske Guide to Colleges. Keep it on your coffee table or kitchen island or any place you’re likely to leaf through it regularly. Visit college websites and spend some time exploring. Many schools have virtual tours. Take a look at the many online resources for college research as well.

Start to Think About College Visits

If you’re headed on summer vacation with your family and there’s an interesting college on the way, ask them to stop. While it’s ideal to visit colleges when school is in session, you’ll benefit from any and all visits (even if it’s just to say, “Yuk, I’d never go there.”).

Make a College Calendar

Devote a calendar solely for college planning. Ask your parents to set aside time now for visiting colleges during your junior school year, even if you don’t yet know what schools you’d like to see. Schedules fill up quickly for families who juggle multiple kids and their activities, so help your parents plan accordingly. Think about when you’ll take the SAT and ACT. How does the testing schedule fit in with your other activities?

Use Your Resources

Talk to your parents, relatives, older siblings and their friends about their college experience. What did they like and dislike? Why? Would they do anything differently if they could do it all over again?

Relax!

The college planning process is best tackled one step at a time. It’s an exciting time in your life, but don’t forget to experience the present. Begin your college exploration, but enjoy your friends and family this summer as well!

You’re filling out a college fit questionnaire and come to the question: Is diversity on campus important to you? “Hmm,” you think as you check the box YES, “I’m really not sure.” Colleges undergo conscientious recruiting efforts to attract diverse students, reporting statistics on diversity as they do graduation rates and freshman class profiles. But for many high school students who’ve grown up in culturally homogeneous neighborhoods, diversity is an intangible.

So why check that YES box? Why is diversity important anyway?

1. Developing as a culturally competent individual will improve your social skills and future ability to collaborate. Interaction with students from different backgrounds promotes intellectual sophistication and worldliness.

2. Diversity fosters innovation. Similar to how academic stimulation can prepare students to be creative thinkers and problem solvers, exposure to diverse perspectives allows you to view problems from multiple viewpoints when making decisions.

3. Diversity prepares students for the increasingly global workforce. The diverse population of future co-workers, bosses, clients or suppliers may not mimic the culturally similar environments in which some students were raised. College is the time to become familiar and comfortable interacting with diverse groups of people.

4. Exposure to diversity encourages greater sensitivity and appreciation of people with different backgrounds or opinions, spawning both self-awareness and the ability to view the world and others from a wider lens.