Competitive admissions have some high schoolers spending their summers in college programs, but do they really make a difference?

Forbes reports:

College Summer Programs for High Schoolers: Are They Worth It?

Parents faced with even tougher college admissions competition are scrambling for anything to give their kids a leg up in the process. That often means a battery of practice testing, tutoring, counseling, and sometimes a pricey summer experience at a school of their choice.

For the last 30 years several prestigious universities around the country have leased out their campuses to summer programs that let high school students spend several weeks taking classes, doing laundry, and wandering around campus just as any college student would. Other universities, like Harvard and Brown, now operate their own summer programs.

While parents often think that these programs will help their kids matriculate at a prestigious school, the gatekeepers to those universities—the admissions officers feared and courted by students and parents alike—say that these summer programs rarely give students an advantage when the time comes for them to apply to college.

“Going to a certain summer program will not be the tipping point for their admission,” says Katherine Cohen, founder and CEO of the college counseling firm IvyWise.