The Summer Mindset Hurting Your Candidacy

For many students targeting top colleges, summer has become synonymous with college admissions. Summer programs, summer internships, and summer research are treated as though they are the key to building a competitive candidacy.In this episode, we challenge this common view and explain why students, parents, and the college admissions industry at large dramatically overestimate the importance of summer activities.We argue that exceptional candidates at top colleges build their resumes year-round rather than in short seasonal bursts––and don’t wait on deadlines, programs, permission, or ideal circumstances to make progress.——“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2025–26 application cycle.Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).Web: greatmindsadvising.comContact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contactNewsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletterEmail: [email protected]: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising/IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising