Young Life's whole strategy is to recruit the coolest, popular, most attractive high schoolers to thereby make YL cool and thereby make evangelical Christianity cool. Young Life is also active on college campuses so it's not really same as being a camper at a Y camp. From what I understand the YL camps tend to have a lot of (clandestine) hooking up also so I'm sure that's a draw.

The parents drank kool aid

This is either a troll or a teen posting. Any parent with a kid considering going to Young Life camp would know what Young Life is and would have researched it prior to involvement....unless the family is super into the org already. If you are a parent and you did not already know about Young Life - please search this forum for other threads. Do not send your kid to Young Life events. Full stop.

It's a religious cult.

Depends on the camp… could be one that is well suited for HS seniors.

A bunch of kids my kid is friends with are going to young life summer camp. I was a little surprised to hear that because summer camp just doesn’t seem super appealing to rising seniors in high school unless you’re a counselor - and my kid is in agreement. Is this a thing most places? We’re in private school and I’m shocked that parents are paying $3k for this trip across the country when there are so many other options.