On paper, you and the student sitting next to you might look exactly the same. You both have great grades. You both take hard classes. And you both spent your summer doing "AI research." So, when a top college only has one spot left, who gets it? The student who built something real. Most high schoolers make the mistake of thinking that the name  of the summer program matters. It doesn't. Colleges don't care about the brand name; they care about the evidence. They want to see

Is choosing s ummer programs  really about finding the most famous campus or about creating something that admissions officers can actually evaluate? Every summer, California students fill out applications with program names. However, when admissions committees review files, they consistently see the same pattern: high grades, busy schedules, and little evidence of g enuine intellectual production . The students did not fail because they lacked ambition. They failed because p