Cate, Luke, Liz and I tore through three seasons of the Friday Night Lights television series last fall. Some of the show’s racier content made for some awkward moments for the four of us but we stayed with it because the characters and the storylines (especially in seasons one and three) were compelling.

We were all surprised – and pleased – to see two supporting characters emerge as stars in the third season. Tyra, once a super social party girl, grows into an ambitious young woman who wants more from life than what the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, promises. Landry, the quintessentially uncool brain, through an unlikely romance with Tyra, develops a deep self-confidence that helps him grow into far more than just a narrowly-focused AP-crushing student.

Their relationship culminates when Landry helps Tyra with her college application essay. The problem is that Tyra’s essay is terrible. It’s a predictable rehash of her activities, with Applebee’s as a metaphor and cliched conclusions as to what it all means.

It’s not Tyra’s fault. Like most high schoolers, Tyra hasn’t had much experience with writing a personal essay. Most English assignments ask for an analysis of a piece of literature, history work focuses on recalling and synthesizing events and science labs demand a clear, sequential detailing of an experiment. It’s no wonder that Tyra (like most high schoolers) produces a shallow essay. No one has ever asked her to look at her life and to see the arc of it – the moments of importance, of meaning, of success, of failure… of personal growth and realization. No one has ever asked her to write an essay about herself and her dreams.

But Landry won’t accept the simplistic essay she’s written. He insists that she look deeper, that she write from the heart… that she tell her unique story. In frustration, Tyra asks Landry if she’s supposed to write about her father who left her, her dissolute mother or her troubled sister? Should she write about spending most of her teenage years filled with anger and hate?

Landry – a great teacher, and an even better friend – responds to her emotional outburst with a simple question: “What changed?”

And with that, Tyra heads down a path that will make her essay a thing of beauty and insight. When it’s done, she reads it to him and then asks: “What did you think?” And Landry responds: “… it’s great.”

But more importantly, Tyra says: “I think it’s great, too.”

Writing a great college essay is not easy. Every senior, like Tyra, needs a Landry – someone who can help draw out your story while allowing the story to be uniquely yours. That’s what we try to do with our College Essay Program.

Overland’s College Essay Program is a teen summer program that  gives rising seniors the chance to spend a week on the Williams College campus in a small group of peers brainstorming, drafting, writing, revising and polishing an essay. From the start the goal is to get beyond the predictable rehash of your high school activities and honors, to help you find your unique story and its meaning.

By the end of the week, you’ll read your essay to the group and hear their loud and supportive praise.

More importantly, though, we’re sure you’ll look at and say “I think it’s great, too.”

-Tom Costley

Watch the clip from Friday Night Lights on YouTube.

There are a number of summer programs that could be called adventure camps for teens – and Overland is certainly one of them.

But that title is somewhat of a misnomer. Overland programs are in some ways adventures, and in other ways we’re a camp, and we do serve teens (although we also serve 10, 11 and 12 year-olds). But I’d really rather be described as a “Program For Adventurous Kids Who Seek To Challenge Themselves In Exciting Ways In Some Of The World’s Most Beautiful Settings.” But I guess that’s a mouthful.

So, I’m stuck with adventure camps for teens (at least for this blog post) – what are some of the options?

For middle-schoolers, we have a number of teen adventure camps right here in New England – you can hike Mt. Washington, go on a Vermont bike tour, or attend a summer writing program on the Williams College campus. For more adventurous teens, you could climb a 14er in Colorado, sea kayak among the islands near Vancouver, or study Spanish abroad in Barcelona.

For students in high school, there are even more possibilities for teenagers who want an adventure in the US or abroad. We have a cycling tour in Nova Scotia, backpacking in Yellowstone National Park, summer community service in Costa Rica, French language immersion classes in Paris, and a safari on the Serengeti.

Wherever you are this summer, you’ll be in a small group of your peers and with two great Overland leaders.

Please join us in 2010!

-Tom Costley

When Liz and I started Overland with three bike trips for teens in 1984 we came from school backgrounds. We had been teaching since graduating from Williams College in the early 1980s and Liz had earned a Masters in the Art of Teaching from Brown University. We both wanted Overland to be much more than simply a bike trip or an enjoyable summer experience – we saw Overland’s potential to become a unique, if unorthodox, school.

From the start, the core mission of Overland has been essentially educational: we have sought to offer young people the opportunity to see the world’s beauty while at the same time helping them to better understand who they are and what’s most important to them. We have always believed that these critical skills are as important as any learned in the most demanding AP course.

We knew that there were two keys to realizing our mission: (1) develop carefully crafted programs with clearly defined goals – programs that would challenge our students in a wide variety of important ways, and (2) recruit terrific trip leaders who would be excellent role models for our students. Year after year, our focus on these two goals has never wavered.

As you read through this website, or look over our catalog, you’ll find the results of our 25 years of striving to meet our mission. We are proud of our offerings and confident in their value. And, as we look back over the hundreds of spectacular leaders who have come through Overland in the nearly three decades since our founding, we marvel at the positive impact they have had on the thousands of students who have joined us.

Liz and I were in our mid-20s when we started Overland – young teachers fresh out of school. Now that we’re 50 and the parents of teenagers, we look back with fondness at all the years of working with the great kids and great leaders. Overland has truly become the school that we dreamed of creating so many years ago.

-Tom Costley

We first offered hiking trips for teens in 1986 since they were a natural outgrowth of our biking trips in terms of structure, culture and goals.

Just as with our biking trips, hiking trips are limited to no more than 12 students and there are always two trip leaders. Our hiking trips are designed to give our students a carefully crafted series of challenges with a clearly defined goal.

For example, our hiking trip in Colorado, Rocky Mountain Explorer, starts with a few days of introductory hikes with light packs in Rocky Mountain National Park to acclimatize before heading into the backcountry for a remote wilderness experience. At the end of the backcountry, the group has a break from the trail as they spend two days on a rafting trip on the Arkansas River. The final days find the group taking on their last challenge: climbing Mount Yale, one of Colorado’s famous 14ers. Standing atop Mount Yale’s 14,192 ft. summit is a fitting end to the trip – an exciting and thoroughly satisfying high point.

Over the years we have built on this model of small groups and carefully crafted challenges and expanded our hiking offerings so that there is a wide range of options.

For students currently in grades 7, 8 and 9 there are three 2-week options: New England Explorer (a 3 on our challenge level scale of 1-10); Blue Ridge Explorer (a 3); and Rocky Mountain Explorer (a 4). We also have a 3-week option in Washington on our Northwest Explorer trip (a 5).

For students in grades 8-12 there are three options out West and all are three weeks long: Yellowstone Teton Explorer (a 6); High Sierra Explorer (a 7); and Alaska Explorer (a 7). All of these programs spend eight to ten days in the backcountry in addition to kayaking, rafting, rock climbing, or mountaineering.

Current 9th through 12th graders can join us for a month in Europe on our European Explorer (a 7) or on our ultimate hiking trip in the Swiss Alps, the Alpine Challenge (a 10).

Finally, our Alaska Leadership Course (a 9) is a trip that teaches our students in 10th-12th grade all that we’ve learned about outdoor leadership in over two decades of leading students from New England to the Rockies to Alaska and Europe.

Hiking with Overland is the perfect way to spend time in some of the world’s most beautiful mountains. Please join us!

-Tom Costley

In the last 25 years I have often been asked if participating in a summer program helps with the college admission process.

My answer, which has been confirmed by friends who work in admissions offices, has always been that no single event, experience or program is likely to make a influential impact on a student’s admissions prospects by itself. Instead, the top schools are looking for a sustained commitment to any undertaking that is an interest – or better yet, a passion – of the student.

Over the years I have marveled at the thousands of Overland students who love hiking, biking, service or language… and who, over their summers with us, have developed a set of skills and leadership abilities that are transferable to an infinite variety of settings. These are the kind of ambitious, talented, focused and adventurous students that make our groups thrive. They are wonderful young people now, they will be campus leaders in college, and they’ll energize their professions and their families.

At Overland we are committed to our mission: to show our students the beauty – and unlimited promise – of the world… and to help each of them to find their place in it. Happy, proud of their accomplishments, and committed to their interests, our students navigate the college admissions process with the confidence that comes from knowing who they are and what’s most important to them. They’re the kind of young people every college wants.

To read a student profile of an Overland alumna and excerpts from her college application essay, please click here.

To read about Overland’s College Essay Program, a one-week college application program in Williamstown for current 11th graders, please click here.

-Tom Costley

To describe Overland, we like to say that it’s a small and supportive group of students with superlative leaders on carefully-crafted programs that have a clearly defined goal…but what does that really mean?

Small and supportive groups: At Overland we never have a group with more than 12 students or fewer than 2 leaders. Keeping our groups small ensures superior supervision, individual attention, and a wholesome family-like environment. A group of 12 students and 2 leaders can travel together easily, they can sit around a single campfire, and everyone can truly get to know every each other during the trip. Everything from eating meals to reaching a summit is also always done together. We place a premium on selflessness and teamwork so the group is encouraging and welcoming to each and every student.

Superlative leaders: Overland heavily recruits from about two dozen elite schools across the country in an effort that generates nearly 600 leader applications a year. We hire about 60 of those applicants and have roughly 50% of our leader staff returning for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or even 5th summer. In addition to our a rigorous screening process involving a lengthy application, written references, background checks and in-person interviews with every one of our finalists, we hire leaders who are not only incredibly qualified but are fun, enthusiastic and engaging role models for our students. Read about our leaders here.

Carefully-crafted programs with a clearly defined goal: From trip design and leader hiring to student placement and our 10-day leader training, we’re making sure that every component of every trip is planned in minute detail. This ensures the safety and success of our groups around the world. We also want our students to be challenged and feel a sense of accomplishment on their trips. Whether that’s the challenge of being away from home for the first time, biking across a continent, climbing a 14er, or learning a new language, each program has a goal that the students as a group work towards and achieve together.

Please join us in 2010.

-Conor Frantzen

Our flow of applications is running at over 30 a day and is surpassing last year’s daily totals consistently – if Overland is in your plans for this summer, now is the time to apply.

The trips that are filling the fastest include:

- Field Studies: Tanzania (first section is full!)
- Alaska Leadership Course (new section opened!)
- Pacific Coast
- Language Immersion France
- North Country Adventure
- Nova Scotia & Acadia
- Language Immersion & Service Peru

Please contact us for questions on the latest enrollment.

Overland offers over 40 carefully crafted programs with clearly defined goals led by superlative leaders. Please join us this summer!

-Tom Costley

I make very few claims when talking about Overland -  I generally think any discerning listener will see right through it. Who can believe a claim like: “The Worldwide Leader In [fill in the blank]”?

But I will make this claim: Overland pioneered a new approach to language immersion programs that offered high school students daily native speaker instruction, afternoons and weekends filled with immersion activities and travel, the support and mentorship of two superlative American trip leaders, and a safe, wholesome environment with 24/7 supervision and support.

I’ve been quietly pleased to see our language immersion programs copied by others.

Our three or four-week language study abroad programs in Spain, France, Costa Rica and Peru are some of our most popular trips every year, and for good reason.

Call me — or our language program director, Melissa Revotskie — and we’ll be happy to tell you more about the Overland approach to language immersion.

-Tom Costley

A group on our Berkshire Adventure summer camp for 5th graders on top of Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts

Over the past 25 summers Overland has grown into an excellent New England summer camp. Through our offerings to 5th graders (10 year olds and 11 year olds) and 6th graders (11 year olds and 12 year olds) we have firmly established ourselves as a wonderful camp for adventurous kids. Unlike traditional camp, however, at Overland there is no lake with cabins and a dining hall — instead, all of New England is our camp: the Berkshires and Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains in Vermont, and Lake Sunapee and the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Overland’s campers explore by foot and bike, they camp out at night and they are led by caring, conscientious counselors who assure their safety and well-being every step of the way.

If your 5th grader is looking for a summer camp adventure  in New England, check out our 1-week Berkshire Adventure camp or our 2-week Mountains & Sea Adventure program.

For 6th graders, we have our 1-week New England Adventure camp and our 2-week North Country Adventure program.

-Tom Costley

Now that our enrollment season is well underway, the phones are ringing off the hook and we spend our days in the office answering students’ and parents’ questions. This is an exciting time for us… and despite the heavy workload we all enjoy the non-stop conversations.

In this post I’ll address the most common question:

“How do I make a decision between a biking trip, a hiking trip, a service project, a language immersion program abroad, a writing program or an environmental studies program?”

“It’s easy,” we always say. The essential Overland experience (a small group meeting a series of carefully-crafted challenges with a clearly defined goal) is the same on any Overland program. Making a choice, then, is as easy as simply picking the program that most appeals to you. Here are some ways you might narrow down your choices:

By Location

If you’ve always wanted to explore New England or travel out West, then start by investigating our different hiking, biking and service options in each region. Use the Find a Program search feature located on our home page.

By Challenge Level

Are you more interested in a fun summer adventure or a challenging experience? Then consider these options:

Low Challenge: Go on a cycling tour of Cape Cod and the Islands

Moderate Challenge: Study Spanish abroad on Language Immersion and Service Peru

High Challenge: Hike the Swiss Alps on the Alpine Challenge

By Length

Even if your summer is packed with family plans, you can still find time for the best summer adventure. Use the Find a Program tool and you can search by program length or even start date.

Need more guidance? Just call us! 800-458-0588. We’re open every day… weekdays 7:30 am to 9:00 pm and weekends 10:00 am to 6:00 pm EST.

-Tom Costley