SUMMER OF SCAM.

• Author: Kim, Anne
• Position: Summer pre-college programs

ELITE UNIVERSITIES ARE MAKING MILLIONS OFF OF PRE-COLLEGE PROGRAMS FOR TEENS. WHAT ARE THEY REALLY SELLING?

Among the thousands of personal appeals on the crowd-funding site GoFundMe, you'll find a 2017 campaign for a young woman named Kirstin, a then high school junior with wavy light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smile that hints at suppressed excitement.

"Kirstin's Invited to Stanford!" the page, created by Kirstin's aunt, declares. "My 16-year-old niece has been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. After working hard her entire school career to achieve a goal, she has done it!"

Kirstin, it turns out, was not admitted as an undergraduate, but was raising funds for an "Intensive Law & Trial" summer program offered on the Stanford University campus. Tuition for the ten-day program runs to $4,095, not including airfare and pocket money. "Stanford, one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, is impressed enough with her to have invited her to this program in Palo Alto, California this summer," the post continues. "Her extended family is trying hard to raise the deposit of $800.00 by week's end so this opportunity does not slip through her fingers."

Search "pre-college" on GoFundMe.com and you'll find dozens of similar campaigns from hopeful students dazzled by the allure of two weeks on an elite campus. "Going to the Summer @ Brown PreCollege Program would give me a preview of what life would be like if I attend the school of my dreams," reads a 2018 campaign by Benjina, from Newark, New Jersey. "This program will give me the experience of a lifetime," writes Yakeleen, a high schooler from Tucson, Arizona, hoping to raise $2,200 to attend Harvard's pre-college program. "Coming from a low income background while being a first generation student, this is a grand oppurtunity [sic] I intend on taking advantage of."

These posts reflect the growing trend of summer "pre-college" programs at the nation's most prestigious universities. Stanford, which launched its "pre-collegiate studies" program in 2012, hosts three-week summer sessions for high schoolers with course options on more than fifty different subjects, in addition to the mock trial program Kirstin hoped to attend. Similar programs abound at other elite institutions. In fact, of the top forty schools ranked in U.S. News & World Report, all but one--Dartmouth--offer some sort of summer program for high school students (and, in some cases, even middle schoolers). "More and more colleges and universities are offering short-term on-campus programs that offer a taste of what life would be like at their institution," reports the International Association for College Admission Counseling.

These programs can offer precocious teens an enriching, hands-on preview of college life. But they also exploit both the allure of brand-name universities and families' anxieties about an increasingly cutthroat college admissions process in which "summer experiences" matter. While even ambitious teens once spent their summers scooping ice cream or lazing by the pool, they now choose from a dizzying array of summer options, including trips to every corner of the planet and camps in every subject from robotics to equestrianism. "Admissions officers want to see that students are spending at least a few of their weeks productively during the summer," said Andrew Belasco, CEO of the college advising firm College Transitions.

The popularity of summer pre-college programs suggests that many kids and parents see them as a good way to get a leg up on college admissions. And many universities, including Columbia and Johns Hopkins, explicitly encourage that belief. But admissions experts I spoke to were unanimous that, when it comes to getting into college, the benefits of most pre-college programs are negligible. The big winners, rather, are the schools themselves, who use pre-college programs to generate millions of dollars in revenue while relying on marketing practices that oversell the programs' benefits, including elaborate admissions processes that imply a misleading degree of selectivity.

And while the target demographic is most likely the sort of upper-middle-class family that can afford expensive private university education, it's clear that the universities are consciously drawing in families who struggle to afford the programs' high costs. Some schools, including Stanford, distribute "fundraising guides" encouraging students to solicit contributions, including through crowdsourcing sites like GoFundMe. "With successful planning, creativity and...