ABSTRACT
The livin’ promises to be anything but easy this summertime for Lindsay Rosenthal, 17. With senior year and college application season looming, the aspiring doctor from Burlingame, California, plans to shadow two Bay Area rheumatologists on their rounds. She will volunteer to buy groceries for AIDS patients, spend hours being tutored for SATs and, if there's any time left over, look for a paying gig. After a frenzied junior year filled with Advanced Placement courses, standardized exams, and varsity tennis matches, what's wrong with whiling away the summer at the beach with a good novel? It just wouldn't wow admissions directors. “I really want to go to a school on the East Coast, and they're really competitive,” Lindsay said. Getting into Ivy League and other elite schools has long been tough, but the bar keeps rising as competition intensifies. For stressed-out teenagers in the final throes of high school, that means more testing, more AP classes, more community service—in short, more resume building.
