Every summer, thousands of college students face the same decision: enroll in a summer program, take an internship, or spend the break working a regular job and catching up on sleep. On paper, summer programs look like the obvious winner. They promise networking, resume-worthy experiences, and a chance to explore career paths before committing to them. But the gap between what programs promise and what they actually deliver can be wide, and the financial stakes are high enough that guessing wrong stings.
A recent Forbes piece by Sarah Hernholm laid out four questions every student should ask before investing in a summer program. The most pointed one cuts straight to the heart of the value question: what does the program actually buy for the price?
The Price Isn’t the Value
A $6,000 residential program at a prestigious university buys a dorm room, a meal plan, some college-level lectures, and a name on a certificate. It does not buy admissions preference at that university. It does not, in most cases, buy meaningful faculty mentorship — the professors teaching the courses are often graduate students or adjuncts, not the tenured researchers whose names appear in the brochure. And it rarely buys an experience that a motivated student couldn’t replicate through a state university’s summer session, a community college course, or a self-directed project with some structured feedback.
This doesn’t mean expensive programs are scams. Some genuinely offer intensive, cohort-based experiences that change how students think about their fields. But the price tag alone tells you nothing about quality. A free program run by a nonprofit with strong industry connections can open more doors than a $10,000 program at a brand-name school.
The question to ask isn’t “is this prestigious?” but “what specific outcomes do past participants point to?” Look for alumni who can trace a direct line from the program to a job, an internship, or a skill they demonstrably didn’t have before. If the program’s marketing talks mostly about the campus, the dining hall, and the “transformative experience” without naming concrete alumni outcomes, treat it with skepticism.
Who’s Actually Teaching?
This is the question most students forget to ask, and it’s the one that most reliably separates substance from show. In many university-affiliated summer programs, the faculty listed on the website are advisors or figureheads — their names lend credibility, but their actual contact hours with students might total a single guest lecture.
The better programs are transparent about who teaches what. If the lead instructor is a graduate student, that’s not automatically bad — some of the most engaged teaching happens at that level — but you should know it going in. If the program boasts “access to industry professionals,” ask how many hours of direct interaction that access entails. A 45-minute Q&A with a visiting executive is not mentorship. A week-long project where that executive reviews your work three times is.
For LGBTQ+ students in particular, the question of who’s teaching carries extra weight. A program that claims to be inclusive but can’t name a single LGBTQ+ faculty member or isn’t able to describe how it handles housing assignments for trans and nonbinary students is signaling that inclusion is marketing, not practice. Programs with genuine commitments to diversity will be able to answer specific questions about their policies without hesitation.
The Networking Reality Check
“Networking opportunities” is the most overused phrase in summer program marketing, and it almost never means what students think it means. What it usually describes is proximity: you will be in the same building as interesting people. Whether that proximity converts into relationships depends entirely on the program’s structure and the student’s initiative.
Programs that actually deliver on networking tend to have specific mechanisms built in: structured mentorship pairings that last beyond the summer, alumni networks that actively respond to outreach, project-based work that gives professionals a reason to remember your name. Programs that just put you in a room with important people and call it networking are selling access, not connection.
The better question to ask: does this program have a track record of alumni staying in touch with each other and with program staff? Do they maintain an active LinkedIn group, an alumni Slack, or regular meetups? If the community evaporates the day the program ends, the networking was never real.
The Alternative Path
Here’s a possibility that summer program brochures don’t advertise: for some students, the best summer move is to skip the program entirely and build something on your own. A summer spent volunteering with a local nonprofit, completing a relevant certification online, or building a portfolio project can generate more talking points in a job interview than a program that thousands of other students have also attended.
The calculation is different for every student, and there’s no universal right answer. But the worst outcome is spending a summer and a significant amount of money on something that leaves you with a certificate, a handful of new acquaintances you’ll never talk to again, and the vague sense that you could have done more.
Before you send the deposit, ask the four questions: what am I actually buying, who’s teaching, how does networking work in practice, and what would I do with this summer if I didn’t enroll? If the program still looks like the best answer after honest answers to all four, you’ve probably found a good one.
