Reply to Unhappy With Summer Pre-College Program

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Unhappy With Summer Pre-College Program"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I've been talking with my husband about this but wanted some feedback from other parents. We paid about 6,000 dollars to send our teen to a pre-college program. We didn't do it because we thought there would be any leg up on admissions. It was just a way for our kid (who has only done online summer school for the last two summers because of the pandemic) to have some independence, get a taste of college life, meet people, have some interesting academic experiences. And that's how the program is pitched. It's an academic program, but there's also supposed to be socializing and getting to know other teens.

That is a lot of money. We can afford it, but it's not peanuts.

This is only the 5th day. The program is a month long, so that is a short time but there is time for it to improve. But so far I'm disappointed. The academic aspect hasn't been great so far (some things were not really thought out), but I'm most upset that they aren't providing any fun social interactions for the teens, so my kid is just sitting in her room at night (no roommate). Like not even optional games or a movie or anything to get kids to get to know one another. I'm sure the extroverted kids are finding friends. But mine is an introvert. You've got 70 kids sitting in dorm rooms in one building. And you have nothing for them to do but study?

I called the camp director to ask about this and just got a lot of, "Oh, thank you for your suggestions."

I told my kid to try and be more assertive, since the program isn't providing any of these interactions, and she's going to try and organize a game night. There are like 8 RAs in the dorm they're in. I'm not sure why it's so hard to create one optional activity in the evenings just for fun. My kid isn't miserable, but she isn't learning much and she hasn't made any friends. I'm feeling really disappointed and mad at myself for choosing this program. For a lot of reasons, I really wanted this to be a good experience, and I'm pretty disappointed at the lack of planning for so much money. I could have just put my kid in summer school again for 250 bucks or had her take a class at a community college. I was paying for the experience. I kind of feel scammed. And this is a well known college.

So, this is just me venting. And telling parents to be careful. I didn't know anyone personally who had been to this program before. I just knew the college and because it's sponsored by the college, I assumed it would be well run. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics