What High School Students Should Be Doing Over the Summer

The summer break can be a useful time for high school students. It is a time students can pad their resumes, enrich their academics, and get some serious college planning done. Here is a year by year guide for what students could be doing over the summer.

        As soon as students walk out the door on the last day of 8th grade, high school has begun. Depending on your state, child labor laws can restrict the amount of time these students are able to work. This is a great time to begin amassing community service hours which might be required for scholarships down the road. Even if they are not required, they’ll look good on scholarship applications and college admission applications. If students plan to play sports in high school, they might want to inquire about any summer training programs students already at the high school are participating in. Of course, they should attend their high school freshman orientation as well, if one is offered.

After freshman year, the things above hold true. Students might also consider taking
additional classes online. In this regard, it might be a good idea to have a rough
draft of all the courses a student plans to take for the rest of high school.
There might be some courses a student wants to take but that don’t fit nicely
into the traditional school year. Thus, squeezing something into the summer to
make room for such a course is often the way to go. The summer following
freshman year can be a great time for this as work restrictions might still
exist, there aren’t some of the other demands below, and students have experience
in high school level work. This is also an ideal time to take driver’s ed.

After the 10th grade, many students will hold jobs, they should still work to acquire
community service hours, and perhaps take coursework online. This is an
important time to start touring colleges. These students are just over a year
out from completing college applications so it is crucial that they begin to
put the list of colleges together they plan to apply to. Parents can take a
hand in this by scheduling college tours to coincide with summer vacations. All
colleges offer formal tours and you’ll probably gain more insight with these
than just walking around campus on your own. Lastly, rising junior students would
do well to spend some time studying for college admissions tests like the SAT
and ACT

Such tours can continue into the summer after the 11th grade. This is a good time to
reflect back and verify there were no failed classes that need to be retaken in
order to graduate. Students can also spend time reflecting and putting together
a list of accomplishments and points they want to be sure to include on their
college and scholarship application which will come as soon as school starts
back in the fall.

Just because school is out for summer doesn’t mean high school students don’t have anything they need to do. There are plenty of small tasks that can add up to big
accomplishments on the road to graduation and beyond.