If you are a high school sophomore or junior and looking for something interesting to do this summer, check out the summer programs offered at UCLA.  You can take an academic course, one of the regular classes offered in their summer session, or attend an institute offering insights into possible majors and careers.  If you take an actual course, you will commute to and from campus.  Many of the Summer Institutes include housing in a UCLA dorm.  Check out the possibilities here:  summer.ucla.edu/ushsstudent

Here's a great summer program for students who live in Ventura County or western Los Angeles County.  Regardless of one's politics, the Reagan Student Leadership Program allows students to expand their leadership abilities by attending a week-long workshop on communication and decision-making.  There are six, one-week programs to choose from.  Here are the details:
​www.reaganfoundation.org/education/student-leadership-program/

Summer will be here before we know it!  For students, summer can be a great time to explore your interests by taking summer classes at a local college, attending a program where you can stay on a college campus, or even work at a job or internship.  I have put together a sampling of summer programs that are available both here in California and across the country.  This is just a sampling and there are many more out there.  But I wanted to provide a starting point; there are programs out there for every interest, including the arts, politics, medicine, communications, etc.  Check out this this:  summer_programs_ce_2018.pdf

It's time for sophomores and juniors to consider how they will spend their summer of 2018.  There are lots of summer enrichment programs out there and I always prefer the ones where students are selected by a competitive application process that includes transcripts, test scores (if available), letters of recommendation, and essays.  Here is one highly selective program with an early application deadline of January 12, 2018.  I will post more information about other programs in the next couple of months, but check out this one at MIT.
​www.cee.org/academic-program