"I wanted to do something valuable before I go to high school," said Fox, 14, who lives in Berwyn and will soon enter Conestoga High. "I really got my priorities together. I didn't want to be sitting around."

For many hyper-scheduled, ultracompetitive teens, gone are the days of scooping ice cream and lying on beaches. Summers are for biological anthropology and heavy SAT prep, making contacts and getting an edge on an Ivy League application.

Business is booming for get-into-college camps and other enrichment programs across the nation and in the area, where students are shadowing doctors, delving into international relations, and cultivating A-list references.

The trend toward precollege achievement is, in fact, so pronounced that it has produced a backlash, with admissions officials and child psychologists wondering if such intensity is good for children.

In a paper aimed at prospective students, three Harvard University officials beseeched youngsters to "bring summer back."

"Students need ample free time to reflect, to re-create . . . and to gather strength for the school year ahead," they wrote.

Marlyn McGrath, Harvard's director of admissions, said some students' compulsion to spend the summer polishing resumes might not help them.

"We have no evidence in Harvard admissions decisions over time that shows a consistent favorable judgment on packaged summer programs," she said. "You could just be a lifeguard, or spend a whole month reading Dostoyevsky, or visit your grandparents. All of those things are so rich in human terms."

Indeed, admissions officers and child psychiatrists warn that activities designed only to bolster a teen's credentials are problematic at best, unhealthy at worst.

Jeannie Borin, president of College Connections, a college-admissions counseling firm in Los Angeles, said that teens needed to know how to find balance, and that enrichment impressed only if it matched a student's genuine interests.

By the same token, Borin said, ambitious students need to do more over the summer than play video games.

"GPA and test scores are no longer sufficient no matter how high they are," she said. "Colleges are looking for standout features."

Fox, the Berwyn teen, settled on a business camp at Haverford College. On a recent day, the gregarious boy said he figured studying venture capitalism and stocks at a Julian Krinsky enrichment program would give him a jump on his future career.

Down the wide wooden table from Fox, Sonny Gindi, a 16-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y., said he wasn't big on school, but was big on achieving and soaking up all he could during the summer so he'd be ready for college.

"I just don't think subjects I take in school will help me in life," said Gindi, fresh from quizzing developer Bart Blatstein, a class speaker, on real estate strategies.

The University of Pennsylvania's dean of admissions, Eric J. Furda, is all for horizon-broadening, but said he wanted students who know how to relax.

"People shouldn't feel that this is another box they need to check - 'Summer experience, check, I did that, now how does it look on my application?' " Furda said. He looks for motivation - what a student gets out of a program and how he or she articulates it.

Fancy summer pursuits are by no means a must, he said.

Still, parents are clamoring for them, said Wil Burns-Garcia, director of residential life at Summer Discovery at Penn. In that four- or six-week program, students from around the world take classes for credit or pursue noncredit courses in subjects such as physics and forensics.