You Know the University Where They Had a Great Summer. But Which Program Was It?

Your cousin spent three weeks at Georgetown last summer and loved it.

Or a friend went to Penn for a month. A classmate did a summer program at Carnegie Mellon. You remember hearing about a great program at Michigan.

You want to attend that summer program too, so you start your search with what you know: the university.

Then things get complicated.

You search for high school summer programs at that university and discover that there isn't just one place that shows you everything available. There may be a pre-college program, specialized academies, college-credit courses, research opportunities, programs run by individual schools or departments and even programs run by third parties using the university premises.

Somehow, you know exactly where your friend spent the summer, but still can't figure out what program they actually did.

So how do you get an overview of what's actually available?

Start by finding all the options at that university

Instead of trying to identify the exact program someone else attended, it can be more useful to start with the bigger picture.

Take Georgetown.

A student interested in politics or international affairs may discover several Georgetown summer opportunities that sound relevant. Some may be Academies. Others may fall under Pre-College. They can have similar subject matter but different formats, schedules and experiences.

Instead of researching page by page, looking at all the Georgetown options in one place makes it easier to understand what the choices actually are.

See high school summer programs at Georgetown University →

Then you can narrow the list based on what you want rather than trying to reconstruct what someone else did.

The same thing happens at the University of Pennsylvania for instance.

If all you know is "I'd like to see what Penn offers," it helps to start with the complete set and narrow from there.

See high school summer programs at the University of Pennsylvania →

You may discover that the program you originally heard about isn't actually the one that fits you best.

Sometimes even knowing the program name isn't enough

COSMOS presents another version of the same problem.

If you are in California, you might know that someone loved attending COSMOS and decide that you want to apply too.

But COSMOS isn't a single experience. It operates at multiple University of California campuses, and each campus offers different academic clusters. So you might find yourself browsing 6 different websites with their own navigation and cluster information.

So the useful question isn't simply:

How do I apply to COSMOS?

It's:

Which COSMOS cluster is right for me?

A student interested in machine learning may want a completely different campus and cluster from a student interested in marine biology or biomedical science.

Seeing the COSMOS options together makes it possible to start with your interests and compare the relevant clusters across campuses more easily.

See all COSMOS campuses and clusters →

The university name is a starting point, not the search

This happens at universities across the country.

You can start with Carnegie Mellon and discover programs that differ substantially in subject, price and admissions model.

You can see high school opportunities associated with MIT without already knowing the individual program names.

Or you can start with the University of Michigan and see which of its summer opportunities actually match what you're looking for.

The important thing is not to assume that the first summer-program page you find represents everything available at that university.

Now forget what your cousin did for a minute

Once you've found the possibilities, the search changes.

Maybe your cousin's Georgetown program really does sound perfect.

Or maybe you realize that you'd rather have a two-week program than a five-week one. You want something residential. You need financial aid. You're interested in international relations but would prefer a program with research rather than lectures. You're entering 10th grade and the program you heard about is only for rising seniors.

At that point, the fact that someone you know loved a particular program becomes much less important.

You're no longer trying to answer:

What program did they do?

You're answering:

Which of these programs would actually work for me?

That's why Explore Summer brings programs from the same university together, while letting you refine your options using the same criteria across the entire Explore Summer database.

And if you want to look beyond that university, simply change the criteria and see what else is out there.

Maybe there are programs your cousin never considered that could be an even better fit for you.

The university may be what gets you started. It doesn't have to determine where the search ends.