Learning what interests college-admissions committees drew this Homestead High School junior and 18 other teenagers to a 10-day College Admission Prep Camp run by Education Unlimited (EU) on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts last July 2005. The program is among many such camps offered across the country this summer, by both private companies and college-counseling organizations, because of the growing anxiety and pressure families feel over the admissions process. Over the course of the program, the high school juniors and seniors receive many "tools": individualized instruction on their personal essays, one-on-one college counseling, more than 28 hours of SAT-preparation classes, and a series of lectures on study skills, time management, and interview preparation. College-admissions prep camp can be exhausting, with an average of eight hours a day of classroom time, not to mention homework. It also comes at a price: The Tufts camp run by EU costs $2,250, including room and board at the university. Though some families may balk at the cost, more than half the teenagers at the Tufts camp attend public high schools, a typical percentage for EU programs, the directors say. For many public school students and parents, they note, such camps provide the personalized services and intensive test training that families think are necessary to get into competitive colleges, but that public high schools, where the average student-to-counselor ratio is nearly 500-to-1, do not provide.