Summer School and College Admissions

Ivy Coach is featured in today’s “New York Times.”

Ivy Coach is featured today in “The New York Times.” In a piece entitled “Taking Summer School to Get Ahead, Not Catch Up” written by Kyle Spencer, Spencer writes about high school students who “preview” courses. And what does preview mean? It means taking summer courses to skip required high school coursework in order to accelerate their curriculums.

According to Spencer’s piece in “The New York Times,” “Jill Tipograph, a summer educational consultant and career coach from Manhattan, said summer academics could ‘help maximize the student’s profile’ and be part of the ‘pre-college plan.'” But we wholly disagree with what Ms. Tipograph says here. For students applying to the most highly selective colleges in America, this isn’t the best way to be spending the summer months. Not at all. Highly selective colleges want to see students pursuing their singular talent, satiating their intellectual curiosity, being proactive, contributing to their own small part of this world. Taking a summer class to skip ahead to an AP course? Take that course in conjunction with your coursework during the year. It’s not a special enough way to spend your summer from a college admissions standpoint. So there’s that.

The Director of Ivy Coach tells it like it is in an article on college admissions in today’s “New York Times.”

The article goes on to discuss AP courses. There are some folks who believe that students shouldn’t take and do well on lots of AP exams, that this won’t help them stand out in highly selective college admissions. And what do we have to say about that? Hogwash. As Spencer writes for “The New York Times,” “Brian Taylor, the director of Ivy Coach, a college advising firm on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said the belief was that college admission boards rewarded quantity when it came to A.P. exams. ‘When you have a kid who has taken 10 A.P.s and a kid who has taken three, all things equal, they’re going to take the kid with 10,’ he said.” Indeed. In this case, the more the merrier holds true. The best schools want to see great scores on lots of AP exams. So we agree with ourselves, in case there was any confusion on the subject. Shocking, we know. Hey, we’re self-aware!