What We Didn’t Expect to Find While Researching Thousands of Teen Summer Programs

From a sports management program in London to a sea turtle conservation trip in Greece, researching summer programs has turned up options we never would have thought to search for.

When we started building Explore Summer, we expected to find a lot of teen summer programs. We expected teen travel programs in Costa Rica and Europe. Pre-college programs on university campuses on topics like engineering and humanities. Marine biology programs by the ocean. Wilderness trips in national parks.

What we didn't expect was just how specific, and sometimes surprising, the options would get.

We've now researched 2650+ summer programs for teens, and we are still adding more. Along the way, we've come across entire categories we didn't know existed, destinations that appear far more often than we expected, and itineraries we probably never would have thought to search for.

The more programs we research, the more we realize that starting with a set destination, category or provider can mean missing some of the most interesting options.

Here are some of our favorite discoveries so far.

You can spend the summer studying the business of sports

Sports camps aren't surprising. Sports management programs were.

We've already listed nine programs focused on sports management and the business of sports. These aren't simply camps where students play sports. They explore subjects like sports business, management and marketing. And they aren't all based on U.S. college campuses: some take students abroad, including CIEE - Sports Management & Marketing (London).

For a teenager who loves sports but is more interested in what happens behind the scenes than in improving their jump shot, there's evidently a whole category of summer programs to explore.

It's a good example of something we keep encountering: a fairly specific interest can lead to many more summer options than you might expect.

Some teen summer trips combine places we never would have put together

If you were planning a trip to Hawaii, would Alaska be the obvious second stop?

Apparently it can be.

We've found teen programs combining Hawaii and Alaska, Eastern Europe and Greece, and even Scandinavia and Greece. Westcoast Connection offers them.

These itineraries are interesting because they don't fit neatly into the way people usually search for summer travel. A family might start by looking for “teen trips to Greece” or “summer programs in Scandinavia.” But that approach could miss a program that combines the destination with somewhere completely different.

Sometimes searching too narrowly by destination means missing itineraries you never would have thought to put together.

A summer trip can really mean a summer trip

We knew there were multi-week teen travel programs. We weren't quite prepared for the scale of some of them.

One U.S. explorer program lasts 40 days and travels coast to coast: Westcoast Connection - U.S. Explorer. Another spends an entire summer backpacking in the Rockies: Wilderness Adventures - Summer Gap Semester: The Rockies.

That's not a summer camp with a few excursions. It's closer to an expedition across the country, and a reminder of how broad the phrase “summer program” has become.

There are short programs that give students a taste of a new interest or place, and there are programs that become a substantial part of the summer itself.

That difference is worth considering when searching. Sometimes two programs that appear in the same category are offering fundamentally different experiences.

Fiji is apparently a teen summer-program destination

Costa Rica? We expected it.

Italy, France and Spain? Definitely.

Fiji surprised us.

We've already found nine summer programs in Fiji.

That doesn't make Fiji one of the largest destinations in our database, but nine separate options is enough to make us wonder why this small and remote destination appears so often.

It's also a good reminder not to assume that the destinations adults think of first are necessarily the only places where organizations are running established programs for teenagers.

If you want to work with sea turtles, you have a lot of choices

This may be our favorite example so far.

Suppose a teenager tells you:

I want to do something with sea turtles this summer.

Costa Rica might immediately come to mind. Hawaii might too.

And yes, we've found a variety of sea turtle programs in both.

But we've also found opportunities involving sea turtles in North Carolina, Greece and Panama.

Suddenly, “I want to work with sea turtles” isn't a destination search at all.

It's an interest that could take a teenager to several very different parts of the world, with different cultures, activities and types of programs surrounding the same core interest.

And that's one of the biggest things we've learned from researching summer programs: choosing where to go too early — or with what organization — can actually narrow your options.

If the thing you care about is marine conservation, sports management, theater, international relations or another particular interest, it can be worth starting there, and seeing where it leads.

The summer-program world is much bigger than its usual categories

Most summer-program searches start with a familiar question:

Where do you want to go?

Or perhaps:

What subject do you want to study?

Or often:

What organization did my friends recommend?

Those are useful questions. But after looking at thousands of programs, we're increasingly convinced that they aren't always the best place to start.

A teenager interested in marine conservation might discover that the same interest could take them from Greece to Bali. Someone interested in sports might discover sports management rather than sports camp. Someone who starts by looking at Greece might discover an itinerary that also crosses Scandinavia.

There are simply too many combinations to know in advance what all your options might be.

That's one reason we built Explore Summer around the ability to search by multiple criteria at once, or simply describe what you're looking for in your own words, and see what options are available across many providers.

Instead of starting with a particular program and deciding whether it works, you can start with the things that matter to you and see what's actually out there.