Residential summer school for 15 year-old from the US?

[aftenoondip]

The 15yo daughter of an American work colleague would like to come to England for a "boarding school" type experience - basically a residential summer school with both educational and recreational activities. She is interested in studying medicine in the future, so something aimed towards that would be ideal, but not crucial. It would be helpful to be within reasonable travelling distance of London as she has relatives there.

Any recommendations or suggestions?

Hello, I can recommend the summer camp at Heathfield school in Ascot - it wouldn't have any relevance to her medical aspirations but it is a good mixture of activities - sports, drama, art and photography etc. I think there are two types of camp, one for English girls and one from overseas girls, the overseas girls get taken out to do more sightseeing and visiting places of interest. When my daughter went there were quite a few overseas girls, they are definitely able to pick them up from the airport etc if necessary - some spoke really good English and some did not. The summer camp is only for girls and it only runs for 4 weeks (girls can go one week at a time, or more, they do different things each week). My only query would be that at 15, your friend would be one of the oldest, I think the age range is about 8-16. Saying that, when my daughter went she was very young, and the huge majority of girls were of secondary age, certainly 12/13+. It is definitely a boarding experience - have a look at their website, although I think the cost varies quite a bit depending on whether you are doing the summer camp for UK girls, or the overseas camp, even though the girls do virtually the same activities - we did it two years ago and I can recommend it.

Oxbridge Academic Programs are very US-student friendly and allow students to "major" in Medicine on their summer school. They were recommended to me by the head of one of the Oxford tutorial colleges and the extra-curriculars on offer sound pretty wide-ranging.

Check out UCL/Debate Chamber courses. They are short and would not give her a place to stay. But there are some American kids there who for example come stay with an uncle in London. There is an introduction to medicine called Young Doctors.