#162 Expert Guide to Summer Programs for Teens with Cindy McCormick Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Is your teen summer still up in the air? With January already behind us, many selective summer program deadlines are looming. But don’t worry, you haven’t missed the boat yet. The challenge is finding the right program to benefit your teen’s college bound journey, not just pad their resume. Today I’m thrilled to welcome back independent educational consultant Cindy McCormick to share her expertise on summer programs. As someone who’s helped countless families navigate this landscape, Cindy brings clarity to the often overwhelming world of pre college summer experiences. She’ll help us understand which programs are worth the investment and how they can boost your teen’s college applications. We’ll cut through the marketing hype and explore how summer programs can help your teen test drive potential majors, experience campus life firsthand and gather meaningful material for those crucial college essays. Plus, you’ll learn the insider tips for maximizing these experiences on college applications. Because it’s not just about attending a program. It’s about how your teen showcases what they gained from it. Whether you’re just starting to explore summer options or feeling pressure about approaching deadlines, this episode will give you the clarity you need to make informed decisions about your teen’s summer plans. I’m Lisa Marca Robbins and I want to welcome you to college and career Clarity a Flourish Coaching Production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation. Cindy, my friend, welcome back to the podcast.

Cindy McCormick: Hi Lisa. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Well, you know, it’s winter while we’re filming this, recording this, and we’re going to talk about summer and you are the no brainer expert on this because all of our listeners should know that you put in a huge amount of work every year for your clients for just the general good of the public of the world. Your generosity of curating a list of really valuable summer experiences. And first of all, thank you for doing that and updating it every year. I know that is not easy.

Cindy McCormick: Well, it’s my pleasure. And people come to it, they use it.

Lisa Marker Robbins: We have a shortcut to it for our Listeners, if they go to flourish coaching co.com forward/summer, it’ll take them directly to your website to that page you have with all of the lists. I love how you organize it because you, you don’t just throw them all on there. You have them organized by area of interest, passion, curiosity, level, aptitude. So they can, you’ve got it well organized. So here’s what if and if listeners, your second time on you were on last year, episode 109. Flourishcoachingco.com forward/109. We’re not going to do a repeat of that episode where we talked about like what are your options? We, we delved into like pay to play. Should you do it? Should you DIY it? Should you do free options? Listeners, if you want to hear about that, like what, what exists out there and kind of how you plan, that’s a great time. That is a great time to go back and listen to that after you finish this one.

Lisa Marker Robbins: This time we’re going to take a little bit different twist, but I want to start with when you were updating this. Did you notice anything different? Like you’re, you’re doing this every year and I have to imagine it’s not the exact same list every year. So what’s new and exciting and changed in summer options?

Cindy McCormick: Right. Well, what I noticed this year and actually every year there are more and more what we call aggregator sites where middle parties, companies go out and search all the programs out there and then put them on their website. So there are quite a few of those. But what I find is when I’m looking for programs, those aggregators almost overwhelm a searcher with too many options. And then there’s a link to a link to a link. So getting right to the website of the actual program with the details becomes a rabbit hole, so to speak. So what I’d like to do is condense what’s really useful in the programs I have vetted and put them on my site, as you mentioned. And then the other thing is, I do find there are more and more STEM programs in general because I think that’s what a lot of people have wanted over the past few years. Stem, stem, stem. So there are more STEM programs. So I just try to keep it clean, simplify it for the people coming to my website by subject. So you don’t have one of these big, overwhelming, daunting sites with too many options.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Well, I love that because I’m thinking if you and I get overwhelmed by something and we’re in this business, and we know this business, the average parent, the average educator working in a school, let alone a teenager, if we’re overwhelmed, they would be very overwhelmed. So it is a gift that you put so much work into trying to make it just as easy and as few clicks as possible. So thank you.

Lisa Marker Robbins: You know that it’s interesting you said that thing about stem. I have. I’m not going to say who it is yet. It’s going to be a great episode. It’s coming up in March. I have somebody from a highly selective institution and admissions, and we’ll both say, I told you before we started who it is.

Cindy McCormick: Yes.

Lisa Marker Robbins: So we’re very excited about this guest. And he came on to discuss how colleges vet students fit to their intended major at their institution. Largely, they do not admit directly into the major. You’re admitted to the university. However, and this goes with what you just said. There’s so you said there’s so many more STEM options. Their school just made computer science, by and large, a direct admit major when no other major at their school is. And I think that’s a sign of the times. Like, there’s just such, you know, it’s a question of does the world really need it. But here’s what we know. There’s a lot of kids that have high aptitudes in tech. There’s a lot of interest there. So those programs are really even more selective than other programs. And, you know, at their school, I said to him, I’m like, you know, you’re not calling it a direct admit major, but would you admit that you, by this tweak that you did to the admissions process, you basically made it a direct admit major? He’s like, absolutely, we did. Absolutely.

Cindy McCormick: Right.

Lisa Marker Robbins: So sign of the times.

Cindy McCormick: Yes. And I have so many families new to this college advising process come to me with no idea how in demand STEM computer science really is. And it’s a process of getting them used to this idea. I want to support your son or daughter in this area, but there’s great competition.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yeah, absolutely.

Cindy McCormick: Yeah. So these summer programs play into that because in some cases, having the experience over the summer and showcased your total interest and gone a little further in it, just make sure it’s the right fit is what colleges like to see.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yeah, I mean, that’s what, and that’s what we’re talking about in that episode coming up. Like their website at this school says, we’re going. While you’re not applying direct, you’re not going to be admitted directly to your major. You’re going to tell us what your intended major is, which is what most schools do. And we’re going to look for evidence of that fit.

Lisa Marker Robbins: So let’s talk about the reasons why somebody should spend the time now. And, and now is the time. Because the deadlines on these programs that you have listed, I mean, what are the latest deadlines? Are they like March, April are as.

Cindy McCormick: Late as even April. But that’s an outlier. I would say the majority of the more selective programs, those deadlines are January and sometimes the first week of February in general.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yep. And then there’s a whole bunch more that is like the less selective, but maybe still selective, but not ultra selective are going to be February, early March maybe.

Cindy McCormick: Right. That that’s the trend. There are a few on literally in like November, December of the prior year to the summer. Very few. But I do bring it up to my students in October, which seems wrong. Why are you talking about summer when it just ended? But I do for the, in the case of these early deadline programs. But I think most of my students, I talk to it in about it in January. They get them in.

Lisa Marker Robbins: That’s why we’re, we’re recording this on the last day of January and we’re going to get out in February as soon, soon as possible. But I, I was just doing our launch live Q and A this week with the students in our course, and I said, I, when we come back here on Zoom on February 18, I want everybody to have this part figured out. Like, what are you doing on spring break? What are you doing over summer? So beyond this idea of, okay, figuring out kind of like, do you really like this subject as much as you do, like, what are the primary drivers that you are taking the time out of your college advising with your families to say, like, we need to take time to talk about this. What are the reasons for being purposeful and not just letting summer happen?

Cindy McCormick: Oh, so important. Right. I always say to my students, if you don’t have a why, you might not follow through. So why am I taking my summer? I’m a teenager. Summer’s everything to me. I want to just relax. Well, these programs out there are, I think first and foremost a way to explore interests and a lot of times rule in okay, I really do love this. I think I might want to major in it or rule out. And I have seen both play out multiple times where a student thought they wanted to major in something or follow that career path, did a summer program and either loved it and confirmed that or went, I didn’t like it and they were able to change direction. Think about from a parent point of view, how much money just was saved. If you took your summer off, you didn’t explore that interest. You applied to that major at a college that specializes in that and then you found out that you didn’t like this. Now you’re a year in, two years in money in and wait, I want to change my mind. So that’s the big. For me, that’s the biggest value is confirming those interests are ruling them out.

Lisa Marker Robbins: You know, I want to add to that too, when you say like the amount of time and money that that just saved the parent. The other part of this is, and I’m going to go back to this computer science example at the highly coveted majors at colleges that either admit directly to the major or even if they don’t admit directly to the major, once your feet are on campus, if you decide you want to switch into one of these in demand majors, engineering, nursing. I’m going to even add to that things with like studio time or field experiences. Teaching business, architecture. Business. My daughter just graduated from a business program last April and she had co ops to do it. Those have coveted spots and they. Even if the school has a policy, well, yeah, you can come here and figure it out. You may not be able to switch. You might have to transfer schools, you might have to settle for a different major. So doing that work to confirm the fit or you know what I always say, let’s not say that you made a mistake or it was a failure. Like if there’s a lesson learned, it’s a win, right?

Cindy McCormick: Right. Absolutely. That’s growth mindset.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Absolutely. And we need to encourage that because I don’t think kids in today’s society naturally are being fed growth mindset messages. And so if there’s a lesson in this one, okay, what? Why else do we do these? Why?

Cindy McCormick: Why else? So then there’s. Okay, so we just talked about the intrinsic reasons, right? This explore and discover your own potential and interest. But there’s the college side, right? We are helping students put together a beautiful application. So by doing a program over the summer, the student is demonstrating interest in a career path. Now, if you’re an admissions officer or representative or counselor, you see a student going above and beyond the regular high school curriculum to demonstrate interest in an academic area. That tells me, as an admissions reader, oh, this kid does a little more than just what’s expected, the basics. So that demonstrating interest reads well. It also showcases intellectual curiosity. Right. I could be interested in cooking and go cook over the summer. But if I’m not majoring in the culinary arts, that may not be showcasing the intellectual curiosity in the way that fits a read of an application. Then there’s the college. If it’s on a college campus, you’re going to get a feel vibe for that institution, which is fabulous for students who are really trying to weed out and filter out the right fits and the wrong fits. So. Oh, okay. I really like this kind of campus. Great. You just lived there for a week or two or three.

Lisa Marker Robbins: So how do you respond to the. I had a kiddo in our course a couple years ago who was interested in a program at Duke. But it seemed to me that, I mean, it was. We dug into it and I asked him some thought provoking questions where it was more about, he wants to attend Duke. He. But that was like the option of the summer program that he felt like maybe he could get into still. And so I didn’t really see evidence of like that particular camp or experience. Summer experience did not align with previous coursework, the rest of the activities list. And so I said, I don’t see alignment here with like, there’s lots of summer experiences out there and you could even create your own where it would align better with the rest of your application and who you’ve shown us to be. Why are you choosing this camp? And he thought that by going to Duke’s, Duke’s campus or any camp, it was going to open the door to admission.

Cindy McCormick: Yeah.

Lisa Marker Robbins: How do you respond to that line of thinking? Have you seen that to be true?

Cindy McCormick: Well, and we did touch on this in that last episode because it is a little bit of a marketing

Cindy McCormick: ploy. Right. If you’re a company that puts out summer programs and you’re able to secure Duke’s campus, now you’ve got Duke in your marketing. Like, oh, on Duke, you know, they know, the people out there see Duke and go, I have a better chance of getting into Duke because I’m already going to Duke almost. I mean, I don’t know percentages. But the truth of that actually panning out where a college is going, we give preference to these students is very low, very low. Now there are, and I won’t name them, there are a few summer programs on college campuses, selective colleges, where attending that program can help you with admissions. But like, you’d have to do some serious research and vet that before signing up for that reason. So in the case of your student, I would say don’t count on it. Yeah, don’t count on It, I would almost guarantee that’s not going to help you get into Duke. I would rather you do something that fits you.

Lisa Marker Robbins: But to your point, it does give you an opportunity to. And it’s not bad that it gives you the opportunity to go, like, do I look like Duke’s campus? Do I like North Carolina? What attributes does this campus have that I might find in other schools? You know?

Cindy McCormick: Right.

Lisa Marker Robbins: You saying that about. There are a few that. And you do have to dig deep because they are very few and far between where it will give you a leg up. You know, I’m here in Cincinnati and Miami University, which is right outside of Cincinnati, they do have a minority and it’s aimed at black and Hispanic students who are interested in accounting. I mean, could it be any more specific and rules out a lot of people. Exactly. And if you, if you are successful and do it, then there is a pathway to admission. And I, I don’t want to quote anything because I know it changes every year and I haven’t talked to them recently, but that would be an example. But like, how specific is that? Right. So.

Cindy McCormick: Right. Well. And this last year I was touring a lot of colleges in the Midwest. Right. Right near you. And one of them, highly selective school. The group of counselors who were doing the tour got to get the admissions reps alone. And we started asking, like, what would be ways that a person could increase their odds of getting in. And they said, well, off the record, attending these summer, but it was off the record. So, A, I can’t say the name of the school, B, they’re not going to be putting that on their website. But now I know as a counselor, I can tell my students, if you attend this summer program at this university as of last September, they said that would give you a little tiny bump on your application. It’s not going to get you in, but it does look good.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Well, there’s the value of using an IEC if you’re able to afford to do so and.

Cindy McCormick: Right.

Lisa Marker Robbins: And you know, but like that same conversation probably happened on a different campus with a different group of counselors, and you wouldn’t know that one, so.

Cindy McCormick: Yeah, exactly. So it’s better to not assume it’s going to help you get into the university. That’s the bottom line.

Lisa Marker Robbins: So other reasons why we should give up some of our precious free time in the summertime.

Cindy McCormick: So the other reason kind of launches into the next kind of category of tips. And that is a lot. I’d say more than not. Colleges require an essay now. They are Trying to see if you’re truly interested in their school for the right reasons. Are you just throwing it on a list because maybe it’s prestigious or maybe it’s easier for you to get into. They want to know, are you applying for the right reasons? And if we offer you admission, will you actually attend and take advantage of everything we have to offer? So by going to a summer program, you can take notes and start preparing that essay. This is why I’m applying to a school, or these are the reasons I’m applying to this major. So those essays are tougher to write than kids think, as you know. And they get there and they’re like, I don’t know. Do I just search Google? You’re like, no. You need specifics. Well, here was your chance.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yeah. So. And we should say we’re referring to the supplemental college essays, which I’ve had previous post on or podcast on. I can’t remember which number, but where. I always feel like the two most common topics are the what we call the why us essay, so why do you want to go here? Or the why that major at our university, which are slightly different. I mean, how do you interpret those questions?

Cindy McCormick: Well, honestly, I think the why us? For me, I interpret it more as a gestalt, like a whole campus vibe. You. You’re going to talk about the programs, but also the extracurriculars, the student life, etc. Whereas a why this major or program is really, really specific to courses, curriculum, professors, even, like, majors and minors or special special certifications, et cetera.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Okay, that’s. That’s how I interpret it as. Well, I know my friend Susan, who is with wow. Writing workshop. We’re gonna have her on. She is great. I just caught up with her yesterday on Zoom, and so we’re gonna do another. We’re gonna actually talk about AI and college essays. Like, that’s. Oh, that’s.

Cindy McCormick: I am so tuning into that one.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Cannot wait to record it. We’re recording it in March. We’re gonna hear it, publish it in April, right before, you know, college essay season starts. But Susan’s line of thinking is, on a YS essay, you must always address the major. I know that that’s one thing that they teach through while writing workshops. So to me, I don’t know. Do you think any of the other supplemental essays, like the community essay or any of the other ones, honestly, or Intellectual curiosity, are more popular than the Y, us or the major? Yeah.

Cindy McCormick: No. In fact, we are putting at my company, we’re putting together a giant Database of every college and every supplemental essay they ask. So I can help students right now know, like, you’re going to have two for this school. Here are the topics. You’re going to have four for this school. Here are the topics. So they get an idea now to start putting information into notes, and when the time comes to write them, they won’t be starting with nothing.

Lisa Marker Robbins: That’ll be so much easier. And actually, if you. That really brings up right now, anybody can go create a common app account and they can go in and they can see for the essays that were asked for the previous class. Yes, they could. There’s still time that they can change them. But that helps inform. Like, okay, do you have a hard time answering some of these questions? So what might you be able to do over the summer so that you can better answer those questions?

Cindy McCormick: Exactly. So I’m getting it on their mind in their junior year instead of, wow, August 1st just dropped the common app opened. Let’s look at what these supplementals are. Yes, schools change them. I will say warning, you can’t assume the supplemental essay from one year is going to carry to the next. But it still gets your mind thinking about these topics and paying attention to information as you see it instead of dismissing it because you didn’t know it would matter.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yeah.

Cindy McCormick: Okay.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Other tips or cautionary tales that we have?

Cindy McCormick: Okay. So I find there are students who do summer programs come back excited, on fire talking about it, and you’re like, oh, great, write that down. So if they are good about following through, they’ll write down. Or they might have even journaled at the program so they have the information and then comes the application. How do you convey all those notes you put in your journal onto an application so that the reader understands that excitement, that spark you found? So a caution is use that passion, that information, that feedback you had carefully and effectively. Because what I have found is students have it all inside their head, and then the app comes and they don’t know where to put it. And they’re not going to write their personal essay necessarily about just a summer program. And so it almost evaporates. So I want, as a iec, you and I know that’s part of the strategy is communicating that spark, that intellectual, like, thriving passion onto an app somewhere. So for students who are hearing this or families listening to this, be strategic about that excitement, where it’s going to go and how it might be. The supplemental essay might be additional information. It might be into the activities, which are really tiny.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yes. Let’s talk about that and say I’m having somebody coming on soon who she is a former school counselor. She does like word of mouth IEC work. She just retired a year ago and this, this was her first year that of quote, retirement, hahaha. Not really fully retired. And so she was an application reader for a university. And we were having coffee this week and she said to me, you know, there were, I said, how was that? And you know, what’d you learn? And we’re going to talk about it on a future episode of the podcast. But what I saw on her was she goes, gosh, first of all, it was shocking how many kids clearly did not have a second set of eyes. Look at some essays or like some really glaring grammatical errors or other issues. She said, but then there were some that just the spark came through and I was dying to like meet the kid or find out what the university ultimately decided on their admission and how. What kind of financial. She’s like, I just, it came through. I think that goes with what you’re saying. Like when you’re in the moment having these summer programs, things are like sparks are going off. Right. And capture them. Then I, I find we tell kids in my course to for sure be taking notes. But a lot of kids don’t want to write but use. Do a voice memo on your phone.

Cindy McCormick: Right, right. The. The notes app. They, A lot of students use those.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Just talk into it.

Cindy McCormick: Talk into it. Yep.

Lisa Marker Robbins: You’ve got the transcript. It doesn’t have to be well organized. So capture it in the moment. We do the same thing, like if you do an informational interview with somebody about their job, or you do a job shadow or you’ve been on a campus for a college visit. Again, get your thoughts down right away. So great advice. I think that cannot be said enough.

Cindy McCormick: Right. And, and I think you wouldn’t know it until you do it and then it’s maybe too late that you lost that moment. So the other, I guess it’s a caution is just putting like a big summer program into an activity description, like I said, is so limiting because on the Common app you get 150 characters to fully describe what happened. So your hope is that there is a supplemental essay or another place to, to convey that excitement or what you got out of it. But in some cases, some schools don’t have supplemental essays that will ask you why are you interested in this academic subject in some way? And in those cases, I would say the way a student writes those activity descriptions matters. Those sparky verbs or impactful words that are Personal, not a, not a chatgpt synonym, but like your own way of communicating how it resonated with you. That’s a tough, tough ask, but it’s worth taking the time to narrow down what you got out of it in your own vocabulary.

Lisa Marker Robbins: I think that’s an important one where I’m thinking back to my friend who was the application reader this year, and she, she was like, so many kids that missed the mark, but then the ones that did, and we’re going to talk about the difference, but, like, have somebody else put a set of eyes on it. I find, too, that sometimes students are so up close and personal with something they’re using, like acronyms that make no sense to the average reader. You know, I went to the gwi, you know, summer program at whatever, and it’s like, I have no idea what that.

Cindy McCormick: What’s that? Right. Yeah, this is a whole nother podcast, actually.

Lisa Marker Robbins: We should do that. Like how, how to do the activities descriptions. Like, what is a strategy for doing them?

Cindy McCormick: Right. I was talking to a IEC colleague I, I meet with every, every week, and she was a reader at a highly selective college, and she had a student who had done a Girls in STEM program over the summer and really got a lot out of it. And that student was trying to put it in the activities. And the IEC friend of mine said she wrote first thing, girl power all the way. And she said, look at that. That stood out. Even though it took up quite a few characters, it conveyed everything. And that was just this student’s way of communicating. I am a girl. I am so empowered by doing this STEM program.

Lisa Marker Robbins: I love that. It’s way better than I applied to the Girl in STEM program and was accepted to. Right, Exactly. Oh, Cindy, this is so good. So, okay, we’re, we’re going to give the flourishcoachingco.com forward, slash summer. We’ll take them straight to your list. So within two, three clicks, they can get to programs and learn about them. Right. You’ve given fantastic advice. Any parting words? And if there’s no other tips that we didn’t miss, how do people get in touch with you if they might be interested in learning more about working with you?

Cindy McCormick: Okay, so. Tip – I’m going to leave with one last piece of information and we talked about this before we started the podcast and that is, know why you are doing it and when you start and when you’re done, think about these introspective, what did you learn? That’s my leaving my parting tip. And how to get a hold of me, my website: cindymccormickcollegeadvising.com and

Lisa Marker Robbins: We’ll put it in the show notes.

Cindy McCormick: There we go.

Lisa Marker Robbins: It will absolutely be in the show notes.

Cindy McCormick: Right? That is a mouthful. I went back and forth but it is what it is. Then, in Instagram and Facebook, CM College Advising.

Lisa Marker Robbins: And we should say McCormick is M C C O R M I C K. So people know.

Cindy McCormick: Like the spices.

Lisa Marker Robbins: Yeah! There you go. I didn’t make that connection. Well, Cindy, it was a delight and we got all this ideas for future episodes so we know we’re going to have you back.

Cindy McCormick: Yay, I love talking to you Lisa thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Marker Robbins: You are welcome. What a valuable conversation about summer programs. Thank you, Cindy. I hope you’re feeling more confident about helping your teen make smart choices for their summer experience. Remember, while many of the top program deadlines are coming up fast, there are still plenty of excellent opportunities available. The key is knowing where to look. To make this easier for you, Cindy has compiled a carefully vetted list of summer programs that can truly benefit your teen’s college-bound journey. You can access this free resource at flourishcoachingco.com/summer. I highly recommend bookmarking this page, she updates it every year with new opportunities and approaching deadlines. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with other parents who are trying to figure out their summer plans for their college bound teens. Remember, you can find all the resources mentioned in today’s show including Cindy’s curated program list in our show notes at flourishcoachingco.com/podcast. Thanks for joining us today in College and Career Clarity. I’ll see you next week.