Think back to when you were a sophomore or junior in highschool. Which would sound more interesting to you: spending your summer in routine, sitting at home with your family and going to your part time job as a cashier, worrying about how you’re going to get into college; or meeting new people, taking part in exciting service projects, and getting a taste of what it’s like to be a college student? Hands down, the second choice wins. And that’s exactly what UF Young Entrepreneurs for Leadership and Sustainability has to offer.
Sponsored by UF’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Young Entrepreneurs for Leadership and Sustainability, better known as YELS, is a summer program that gives highschoolers a six-week sample of life at the University of Florida. Not only will participants get to have fun making friends and living on campus, they will also be taking vital steps in their preparation for college; the program takes care of the required volunteer hours for Bright Futures, and it gives teens the opportunity to earn up to six hours of dual-enrollment credit by taking two college level classes- “Social Problems & Solutions” and “Exploring Entrepreneurship.” Along with this, YELS has teens learn how to write a proper essay for their college application during a session with the Director of Freshman Admissions at UF. This not only helps the students with their application in general, but it also gives them an advantage over other applicants to UF, which is crucial since the school is becoming more difficult to get into.
While the program itself offers a great service to its highschoolers, unfortunately there are some things that need work. The main issue has to do with the applicants. YELS is not as well-known as it should be, and in order to fix this problem, it’s going to need to take some advice from the all-mighty Google and other social media. Right now, the program uses old fashioned advertising- pamphlets and post cards sent to schools and handed out to students. Along with these classic marketing campaigns, YELS should start utilizing its social media resources- creating Facebook “fan pages” and blogs, which could link to its original site and create a wider applicant pool. If the program can make itself known in the digital social world, it will surely find success in attracting more teens. How can I be so sure? All I can say is, if I had known about Young Entrepreneurs for Leadership and Sustainability while I was in highschool, I would’ve ditched my boring summer routine of watching television and babysitting in a heartbeat.
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