How to Find Summer Activities for College Applications

Planning for the summer means booking trips, organizing get-togethers, and scheduling some well-deserved beach time. But for most students preparing for college applications, it also means spending time exploring extracurricular activities. Here's our list on how to find the best summer activities for college applications.

If you’ve found yourself here, you’re likely comparing the many ways you could spend your summer and questioning how to find summer activities to add to your college application. Summer programs, pre-college programs, summer classes, test prep, travel, athletics—the list goes on! The options can seem overwhelming, and frankly, there’s just not enough time to do it all. But, we have good news…there’s no need or expectation to! While competitive summer programs offer incredible opportunities and help college applicants stand out, there are plenty of alternative options that offer similar results. 

If you haven't already, you've likely searched the following questions on Google and yielded tons of results, some helpful, others not so much:

• How to spend my summer in high school?
• Best summer programs for high school students?
• Best summer programs for college credit?
  

For most of us, it feels nearly impossible to look at a list like Google’s and find the two or three that actually contain valuable suggestions, much less sit down to implement a plan. 

1. Teaches you something
2. You genuinely enjoy
3. You grow from

(Bonus if it helps you give back in some way!)

The route you take to achieve these goals doesn’t have to be a competitive summer program, though it can be. The way you spend your summer will be reflected in a few different areas of your college application: your essays, the activities section, and, in some cases, a letter of recommendation.

Below, we'll discuss ways you can identify extracurricular opportunities and what to consider when searching for the best summer activities.

Table of Contents

• The Importance of Summer Break in College Applications
• Extracurriculars on the College Application
• Where to Find Summer Activities for College Application
• Best Summer Activities for College Applications
• Free Resource for Extracurricular Research
  

The Importance of Summer Break in College Applications

Family vacations are important, and so are pool parties, weekends at the beach, and taking much-needed time for self-care. But I’ll admit, when I hear that a student’s summer plans consist of a family vacation, sleeping in, and their week at camp, I am a little disappointed. If a student is wondering how to make their summer life-changing and memorable, or if they’re wondering, “How can I differentiate myself from other college applicants?” the answer is this: use your summer to intentionally craft your story. 

When an admissions selection committee is reviewing an application, they often ask questions such as:

• Is this student missing from our campus?
• Do I want this applicant as a roommate?
• Do I want them in my sorority?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve closed an application and wished I could have a cup of coffee with that student, or hear their perspective in a class discussion. Colleges have plenty of applicants with a strong curriculum and stellar academic performance, but do they have a student who found a summer job based on their passion for equestrian? One who studied an ancient language and built a website to promote it? Do they have a student who started a successful lawn mowing business, or who ran their own research project at a local university? Colleges are looking for students with varied perspectives and unique personalities because they’re building a community that will enjoy four life-changing years together.  

Extracurriculars on the College Application

A college application is more than a list of grades and classes. The objective information included on your transcript and (sometimes) test scores is only the beginning of the story. The rest is crafted by a student’s experiences, character, and values. It’s woven during the time between classes, the weekends, the afternoons, and the holidays. It’s written by your memories, hardships, and your family traditions. Your fortunate readers - Admissions Officers - get to learn all that you share about your journey and figure out how it fits in among the thousands of applications that the college receives each year.

One of my favorite literary genres is biography, and I’ve read biographies by all kinds of folks,  from famous people like Alexander Hamilton to everyday folks like Tara Westover. Now, imagine opening a biography and finding only a high school transcript! You wouldn’t learn much at all about their lives, would you? College applications are telling an admissions office the biography of your own life, so it makes sense that the essays, activities, recommendations, and honors you’ve received throughout high school are equally as important as the grade you earned in AP Calc. So if we’re thinking beyond the transcript, then one of the most critical times you have in high school to write your high school tale is during your summer break.

Where to Find Summer Activities for College Applications

Here are some ideas that might help get the wheels turning on crafting the story of the best summer of your life!

Look to your Community

Do you have family members or friends who are doing something you’d like to be a part of? Ask them if you can join in for the summer.  Maybe shadow your dentist, begin each weekday morning helping at a local farm, teach swim lessons at your family’s neighborhood pool, or be a nanny.

Discover a Career

Perhaps you have some idea of what you’d like to do with your life. If so, find people who are doing that, and see whether you can get on board. Whether you’d like to become a college professor, an attorney, a nurse, a teacher, or an entrepreneur, create a way to dig deeper into that potential over the summer.

What if you shadowed a doctor, volunteered at a non-profit, campaigned for your political candidate of choice, or participated in a career exploration summer program? You could also simply schedule interviews with folks who are in careers you are curious about: find a lawyer, a project manager, a psychologist, or a software engineer and see whether they’ll donate 30 minutes to an hour so you can learn more about what they do each day.

Use Your Passion as a Springboard

Extracurricular activities don’t need to be limited to a school club or a weekend hobby. Whether you love baking, Latin, mountain biking, or reading, take that passion to the limit! One motto that has stuck with me over the years is: “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” How can your passion become your summer pursuit?  How can your passion become a theme in your story?

I’ve had students volunteer for hospice, raise bees in their backyard, learn to train a dog, write a novel, go to programs all over the world, research sea turtles in the Galapagos Islands, play travel baseball, and coach a swim team.

Best Summer Activities for College Applications

1. Getting a Summer Job

We're huge proponents of high school students spending their summers working. Sometimes, we Collegewise counselors see students get wrapped up in ensuring that their summer job directly relates to their intended major. While we advocate for this if the option exists, finding that close a fit can be a challenge due to barriers to entry, such as certification requirements, minimum required ages, or distance. So we like to challenge our students to think of jobs that may instead be adjacent to their intended major or interests. For example, a student interested in becoming a doctor might look for a job at a nursing home or veterinary office, places where they’re often looking for caring employees with a passion for healthcare.

Interested in marketing? Consider spending your summer working at a local ice cream shop and helping them with their social media marketing. You’d be able to highlight weekly specials and newly released flavors, helping them generate more business. Not only would you get to earn some cash, but you’d also get to build your portfolio, gain experience in the marketing world, garner references, connect with other employees, and cultivate practical skills that would show you’re a responsible young adult ready for the multi-faceted life that awaits you at college.

2. Traveling (No Matter the Destination)

Summer break isn't just a time to build an extracurricular prfile. It's also important to think about college essays. And some of the strongest personal statements and supplemental essays that we read are from students who reflect on their experiences traveling to new places. When we say travel, this can mean a lot of different things—no exotic destination necessary. It could mean traveling to another country, but it could also just mean traveling to parts of your hometown that you’ve never explored before. Consider taking a train to a nearby city to have a full day at a museum, checking out botanical gardens or the zoo with a sketchbook in hand, or exploring a new local hike or urban walk. Many towns have free meetup groups to explore new or familiar interests. Not only do experiences like these open you up to different cultures and ways of thinking, but they also give you a chance to grow and reflect on who you are beyond the typical situations that you find yourself in. 

Whether you’re visiting a family member in another state or country, or just checking out a new store, cafe, or park in a different part of town, allow it to be an experience you fully immerse yourself in. Who will you meet? How will you show up? What will you learn, and what can you contribute? These are the types of questions to consider that can show colleges who you are, and how you’ll show up as a student and community member on campus.

3. Volunteering

Finding a volunteer job is a perfect addition to any summer. As counselors, we often get asked how many volunteer hours it takes to make a student stand out on an application. The truth is, volunteering isn’t about the number of hours you spend on the job, but the impact you make while you’re there. When volunteers show up fully and enthusiastically, not only do they positively impact others, but they’re also able to gain more from the experience. The people you connect with and the lessons you learn from volunteering can offer amazing opportunities for growth and reflection…often the types of experiences you can draw from when writing your application essays!

A volunteer job is often easier to get than a paid position. For students interested in medicine, volunteering at a local hospital or clinic may be of interest. Curious about the arts? How about volunteering at a youth center to teach younger students how to work with different art mediums? If you’re curious about international relations, how can you connect with international populations in your area—maybe by helping teach English? Nonprofits, schools, religious institutions, afterschool programs, and camps are always on the lookout for dedicated volunteers to help contribute to their overall missions. Find something you’re passionate about and consider spending a chunk of your summer volunteering for that cause!

These three options are just a few of the many that can set you up for a successful, productive summer. Adding an online summer course can fit seamlessly into an already stacked summer, further demonstrating interest in a particular subject area. Creating a blog or YouTube channel surrounding a passion of yours leaves you with a tangible outcome to share with admissions officers. However you choose to spend your summer, we hope you’ll do so in a way that stems from genuine curiosity and interest (while, of course, also accomplishing some of the goals you know will set you up for success—ahem, test prep!).

How you choose to spend your free time paints a picture about who you are inside and outside of the classroom. Summer is also an ideal opportunity to spend time with your family and friends, reconnect with your hobbies, and enjoy yourself. Sprinkling in college visits and test prep over your high school summers can set you up for success and lighten the load throughout the academic year. 

When looking for a way to spend your summer, it’s ideal to find a balance of productivity, growth, self-exploration, and joy. Don’t be afraid to get creative and try something new. Since summer programs can be hugely beneficial to your application, if you find a competitive program that works for you and your family, allowing you to work towards your goals, we say go for it. But we like to remind my students that there’s no shortage of opportunities to learn something new, make an impact, deeply explore an existing interest, and gain an opportunity for reflection. However you choose to spend your summer, remember it’s your choice. Whatever you choose, commit to showing up fully, and the experience will help shape you AND make you stand out in your college applications. 

Free Resources for Extracurricular Research

Not sure where to start? Collegewise offers an array of resources that help students find extracurriculars to add to their college applications. 

1. Summer Planning Guide (provides a full breakdown by major or program).
2. Creative Summer Planning Webinar (free tips online and on your time).
3. TeenLife Searchable Summer Program Database 
4. SummerApply (an online summer program research tool).
5. Idealist (an online non-profit, volunteer database).

No matter what you do this summer, we hope you’re fascinated by it. Not only because this makes for a great college application, but because it'll help you write the next chapter of your own fascinating story.

Additional Readings

• 50 Ways to Spend Your Summer
• 3 Myths about Summer Planning
• Last-Minute Summer 2023 Activities for College Credit

About Us: With more than twenty years of experience, Collegewise counselors and tutors are at the forefront of the ever-evolving admissions landscape. Our work has always centered on you: the family. And just like we’ve always done, we look for ways for your student to be their best self - whether in the classroom, the applications, or in the right-fit college environment. Our range of counseling, test prep, academic tutoring, and essay management, all with the support of our proprietary platform, lead to 4x higher than average admissions rates.