Summer plans? Use Your Time Wisely, It Matters.

Here are tips for high school students looking to do something meaningful this summer.

Make sure to do something inspiring, timely, motivating, and impactful. Students should use their summer vacation to do something they didn't have time to do during the school year.

1. Reasoning Matters.

While a lot of students will get a traditional job, try to do something that either backs up your intended major or your Education Evolution story. When you do, you create evidence to support your academic interest and your personal identity. This translates into a powerful college application.

2. Timing Matters.

There are only ten slots available on the Common App activities list (and only eight on the Coalition Application), so not everything you do during the school year and summer will make the cut. However, at the very least, you want something valuable from the summer right before your senior year.

3. Time Commitment Matters.

Admissions officers pay attention to how many hours per week and weeks per year that an activity is done. Summer is short. Make the most of that time. Whether volunteering, working, or doing something on your own, fully commit to it. Summer experiences that take up a chunk of the summer and have plenty of hours each week will carry more weight.

4. Distinctiveness Matters Too.

A student who edited a dictionary for an endangered indigenous language was most likely the sole person doing it. Never follow the crowd when it comes to summer experiences, school year experiences, or anything you do in life. You will stand out and do something incredible when you pursue something that no one else is doing.

5. Seek and Create.

Send out as many emails as you need. Call everyone you know. Connect over LinkedIn. Pound the pavement if necessary. And if no one gives you a job or an opportunity, create your own homegrown project and see your world transform.