For high school students, it’s high time to formulate summer plans. This is the case for juniors (or rising seniors), sophomores, and freshmen alike. If you were planning on attending a summer enrichment program at a university such as Stanford, it may sound fantastic but you clearly have not been reading our college admissions blog over the years. Because regular readers of our blog know that fancy summer enrichment programs at highly selective universities that cost parents around $10,000 not only don’t help students’ subsequent case for admission to top schools but they actually can hurt their case. That’s right. It’ll hurt their chances for admission. Don’t believe us? Ok! You know best.

So what should you be doing this summer to differentiate yourself in the admissions process that you’ll soon be going through? Well, that depends on your interests and passions. If, however, your passion is watching “Scandal,” that won’t do. Although it is a terrific show, one created by Dartmouth alumna Shonda Rhimes. Malcolm Gladwell suggested in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success” that in order to master an activity, you’ve got to invest 10,000 hours in it. Note that’s 10,000 hours. Not $10,000 of mommy and daddy’s money to send you to summer camp at Stanford. Did we say summer camp? Freudian slip. Or was it?

If you don’t know how best to spend your summer months, we recommend that you fill out our free consultation form as soon as possible and proceed with a one-hour evaluation with us so that we can go through your activities (as well as your courses, testing, etc.) and map out exactly how you should be spending your summer (in addition to the rest of your high school coursework, testing, etc.). How students spend their summer months is a significant factor in highly selective college admissions. So it’s always important to get it right. And so few students do…

Oh, and if you’re still not convinced about sleep-away camps at highly selective universities, watch our Founder, Bev Taylor, discuss these very enrichment programs on “Huffington Post Live” below. Did we say sleep-away camps? Another slip of the tongue. It just keeps happening. Make it stop!