Some believe that a productive summer requires spending money to attend a leadership program or travel to a remote country and paint a school.

Two presenters, Liz Marx, a college counselor with Collegewise, an independent counseling company, and Michael Gulotta, an associate director of admissions at USC, at the recent Western Association of College Admissions Counselors (WACAC) conference at Loyola Marymount University shared their summer insights in their session, “From Surfing to Shakespeare, How Students Should Spend Their Summers.”