"Hi, my name is Megan Carr and I attended the one week Summer in New York City program in 2006 as a rising senior. I am now a sophomore at Barnard College and have been working in the Pre-College Programs Office for the past year. Going to school during the summer never sounds like a ton of fun. At Barnard's Summer in NYC program, even though you are taking college-level classes, it never really feels like work. The faculty is highly competent and very knowledgeable. Most have taught college-level courses before; some are even Barnard or Columbia professors. Each class takes multiple field trips throughout the city. I was in a course entitled “Creating Fantastic Fabulist Fiction,” taught by Melanie Fallon. During that one-week period, we not only learned what “fabulist fiction” is (think: ghost stories and fairy tales), but we wrote our own fabulist fiction stories. To get inspiration, Melanie took us to the Guggenheim Museum and to Gramercy Park, the only private park in Manhattan. Trips for other classes included music performances and plays. One of my friends was in the theater class that year and after a play, she got to meet Sandra Oh (now of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame) during a Q&A session that the teacher had set up. While there are classes and homework, the Summer in NYC program also wants students to enjoy and explore the city. There are many options each night for sightseeing and events in NYC. There are the requisite site-seeing trips like the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, trips to Museums, trips to see movies, and usually once a week they have tickets to Broadway shows. I can’t speak from personal experience about the four week program or the Young Women’s Leadership Institution, but, working for Pre-College Program this summer, I’ve learned a more about them. One of the main features of the four week program is the Life After College Series that takes place every Wednesday. Instead of classes, students in the four-week program attend site-visits to different companies and organizations. Some of the past LAC visits have been to MTV, CNN, the ACLU, and The Wall Street Journal. The Young Women’s Leadership Institute is a one week program in which students attend class in the morning and work on projects in the afternoon. Some of the past projects have been a campaign to raise awareness for several organizations such as Amnesty International, conducting research on the college experience and producing a handout to help HS students with college planning, hosting an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Awareness Night to raise funds for ALS. Students also go on site visits and meet with Barnard alumnae at their workplaces. One final point: even though Barnard is a women’s college, the one and four-week Summer in NYC programs are co-ed programs! If you are looking for a program that academic rigor in an exciting city, this is definitely the program for you!"