Summer on the beach, tour a national park, hang out with your
friends?
No, not for you. First, you have resume-building to do. Here’s
five suggestions to make that high school resume pop in the eyes of any
college:
1.
Pre-college summer curricula are much more fun
and rewarding than an hourlong campus tour. These well-developed programs give
students the opportunity to meet instructors, take courses, and get a sense of
college life. The number of possibilities is immense. For example, Midwest students might explore close to home with such offerings as:
Northwestern University has a five-week program guaranteed to
improve writing skills for print, online and other media at the
Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute. And, no doubt, better writers are
more efficient and precise for every college paper assigned in the next four
years.
Or
iLED is a two-week international leadership curriculum taught by
Notre Dame faculty in such areas as architecture, business, engineering and
global affairs. It includes hands-on learning, collaborative projects, and
business and community engagement.
2. Make summer
a “working” vacation. No matter where the family goes for summer in the U.S.,
research potential colleges and visit campuses to get a flavor for how you
might fit in. Always remember frequent contacts, college fairs and tours show
“demonstrated interest,” crucial to most college admission decisions.
3. Bolster your
LinkedIn profile. Connect with executives in chosen disciplines and join
LinkedIn Groups of interest. Post questions and answers to others’ Qs.
LinkedIn’s value is its networking capability. Connect with like-minded
participants.
4. Internships in a chosen
category are often hard to crack for high school students but aim high. There is
a wide selection of jobs out there that fit your personality and work
interests. One recent Valle Consulting client was a caddy at a local golf club.
But beyond learning how to read a green, this teen talked to the executives in
his foursomes about their jobs and used research and tips to develop a stock
portfolio for a lifelong understanding of how to do well in the stock
market. And don’t forget those Rotary or
Elks Club contacts you connected with on LinkedIn. They might be in a field you
are considering and will often give an interested teen a “shadow” someone in
your chosen profession. A week or a month “shadowing” an executive in that area
will give powerful insights into what the job is like on a day-to-day basis,
again picking up networking contacts.
5.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the most important
skill for every student to learn is how to code. Even if you are a social
studies whiz with little interest in algorithms, coding is going to touch every
future career. Get a head start on the nuts and bolts of apps and other tech
underlayment and learn Python, Hadoop, Javascript or a host of other
possibilities. Check out the coding waters and dip into Codeacademy, edX,
Coursera, Khan Academy or MIT openCourseware. Don’t be shy; the water’s fine
and you will get the hang of coding quicker than you think.
