Something different is happening in the college admission scene: the competition is expanding, allowing colleges to become much more choosy than ever before! With the internet allowing students to apply to more colleges, easier, cheaper, and faster, and the children of baby boomers now graduating high school, the number of applications to college has shot up dramatically. Add to that that the more selective colleges, anticipating future fluctuations in U.S. applicants, have already begun aggressively recruiting top candidates from foreign markets like China, Korea, India, and South America to keep the quality of their applicant pools high, and it starts becoming clear that getting into even your match schools, let alone dream school, is an even more difficult task than before, which can spell a lot of frustration for those students who fail to adequately prepare and build a desirable admissions profile.

Now, this does not mean you should give up on that college dream, but it does mean that students with a serious college outlook can no longer afford to spend their summer’s unproductively. Many colleges and universities today are not just interested in students with just good grades and strong standardized test scores but want students that enrich their campus environments as well. And though Archimedean’s one-of-a-kind curriculum does an outstanding job of helping students stand out from the generic high school curricula followed by so many, colleges are also looking for students with a track record of passionately pursuing those activities that expand talents, cultivate leadership skills, open minds, and enrich lives.

Participating in exclusive summer programs, getting an insightful job or internship, conducting college-level research, participating in an intensive community service project are all great ways to experience life on a college campus, explore new interests, travel, explore career fields, develop talents, learn new languages, help others, earn college credit, judge college campus environments, make new friendships and more while building quite an impressive academic profile.

The more exclusive, challenging, and competitive the summer experience, the better it will enhance your application profile and increase your chances of getting into a competitive college or perhaps getting a hold of more financial aid, much-needed assistance with the costs of college today soaring higher than ever before.
Don’t forget too that completing a community service volunteer project is required for graduation in Miami-Dade County and a minimum of 75 hours of volunteer work is necessary to qualify for Florida Bright Future Scholarships and other distinctions.