You've seen the ads. Maybe in your inbox, maybe on Instagram, maybe slid across the table at a back-to-school night.
"Help your child stand out for college admissions. Our 6-week summer intensive helps your student design and execute a meaningful passion project for just $2,895."
Or the leadership version. Or the research version. Or the "build a nonprofit" version. The packaging changes, the price tag changes (sometimes north of $10,000), but the pitch is always the same: your kid needs a thing, and we'll sell you a thing.
Here's what almost nobody selling these programs wants you to know. The college admissions officers at the schools your kid is trying to impress can spot a manufactured passion project from across the room.
What Two Veteran College Counselors Said Out Loud
A recent panel hosted by Laurel Springs brought together Tim Pratt, who spent 15 years as Dean of College Advising at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, and Brennan Barnard, Director of College Counseling at the Khan Lab School and a contributing writer on college admissions for Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Combined, they've been advising families on this process for over 50 years.
When the topic of "passion projects" came up, Brennan was direct: there are now "tons of companies sprouting up all over the country" that will charge families a couple thousand dollars or more to help a student develop a passion project. His advice was equally direct. Don't pay for one. College admissions officers can see right through them.
The reason is simple. Admissions officers read tens of thousands of applications. The packaged passion projects share telltale signs. They start the summer before junior year. They wrap up neatly. The "research" sounds suspiciously polished for a 16-year-old. The nonprofit was founded six months before the application deadline and somehow already has a board, a logo, and a Mission Statement. To an officer reading carefully, all of it telegraphs the same thing: a credit card with a kid attached.
What Sports Parents Are Especially Vulnerable To
Here's the thing nobody talks about. Sports families get hit with a version of this same pitch on every front.
"Your kid needs to do the summer showcase circuit." "Your kid needs the elite club team to be seen." "Your kid needs the private coach, the recruiting service, the highlight reel package, the personal trainer, the nutrition plan, the sports psychologist." Every single one of those things is a real industry, with real marketing, charging real money, telling families that their kid will fall behind without it.
A handful of those things are genuinely valuable for the right kid in the right situation, but the vast majority, for the vast majority of families, are something families could skip without their kid losing a step.
Why over-managed athletes look the same on paper as over-managed scholars
The same pattern that admissions officers see in fake passion projects also shows up in over-managed athletic resumes. The kid who's done seventeen things in high school but goes deep on none of them. The kid whose every summer was "strategic." The kid whose application reads like it was assembled by a project manager. Coaches and admissions officers both read these the same way: as a parent's anxiety dressed up as a kid's profile.
The Test Both Counselors Endorsed
Brennan offered the cleanest filter we've heard for what to actually invest in. He calls it "stretch but not stress."
Picture three concentric circles. The innermost is your kid's comfort zone. The outermost is their stress zone. The middle ring, sandwiched between them, is the stretch zone. The work that helps a kid grow, the experiences that shape who they're becoming, the genuine engagement with something they actually care about, all of that lives in the stretch zone. The stress zone, by contrast, is where parents and consultants tend to push kids when they confuse productivity with growth.
When parents (or paid consultants) drag a kid out of stretch and into stress, the kid usually doesn't grow more. They burn out faster, lose interest in things they used to love, and end up with a resume that looks impressive on paper but reads as hollow to anyone reading carefully. Including the admissions officers your family is trying to impress.
Applying the test to your specific kid
For a sports family, the stretch zone test is useful in both directions. Is your kid stretching by adding the second sport, or stressing? Stretching by playing up an age group, or stressing? Stretching by adding the AP or dual enrollment course, or stressing? The honest answer is sometimes uncomfortable. But the kids who get protected from the stress zone are the kids who still love their sport at 17.
The Reframe That Actually Helps
The other line from this panel that stuck was a quote Brennan shared from David Brooks, paraphrased here. There are two kinds of virtues people accumulate over a lifetime. There are resume virtues, the things you list on a CV. And there are eulogy virtues, the things people will say about you at your funeral.
Here's the part that should sit with parents. The passion project industry is largely built around resume virtues, while the things that actually shape who a kid becomes are mostly eulogy virtues. The two overlap, but they're not the same.
Why sports kids already have an edge here
For sports families, this lands differently than it might for other families. Your kid is already developing eulogy virtues every week, whether they realize it or not. Showing up to practice when they don't feel like it. Carrying their teammate after a tough loss. Cheering for the kid who beat them out for a starting spot. Taking ownership when they made the bad pass that lost the game. These are the things people remember about a person twenty years later.
The kids who lean into those eulogy virtues, instead of trying to manufacture impressive resume bullets, end up more interesting to admissions officers anyway. The depth shows up in the recommendation letters. It shows up in the interview. It shows up in the way the kid talks about their team in their essay.
The Schools Worth Paying Attention To
Some schools are built around the manufactured-impressive model, and some schools are built around the real-depth-of-engagement model. It's worth knowing which one your kid is actually attending.
Laurel Springs, the accredited online private school that hosted this panel, has been doing this since 1991, and one thing that comes through in talking to their counselors is how much attention they pay to who the kid actually is. They've sent students to a wide range of competitive colleges, with about 80% of their graduates reporting acceptance to their first-choice school, and the throughline running through those outcomes is kids who got the time and space to actually go deep on what they love. You can find them through our Back to Sports Hub.
The Hardest Part of This
The hardest part of all of this, honestly, is sitting still while other parents pay for the things and post the things. The kid down the street is doing the $5,000 leadership intensive. The kid on your travel team has a personal recruiting consultant. The kid in your kid's chemistry class founded a nonprofit last week. It's loud, and it works on parents, because it's designed to.
The veteran counselors who've been in admissions offices reading the actual applications are telling you, plainly, what does move the needle. A kid who genuinely cares about something. Who has stuck with it long enough to be good at it. Who can tell a real story about why.
Your kid is probably already doing more of that than you give them credit for. They just need a parent who can tell the difference between stretching and stressing, and the patience to ignore the noise.
The college admissions officers will figure it out. They always do.
