Strider, I think that post 28 is a very good rejoinder to your point. While I greatly value my Boys’ State experience, as did my father before me, and my mother her Girls’ State experience, as someone involved in admissions at a Catholic school, a decent paragraph on this experience in an admissions essay will get her a scholarship offer (at least here). Plus, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God unto God’s is a good way to run one’s life.
Given the strength of the young lady’s Catholic faith, she’s probably applying to Catholic Colleges and Universities. I have a friend who was an admissions counselor at a well-known Dominican College in the Northeast. According to my friend, the admissons committee is much more impressed with a well-written two paragraph essay from the heart about what the applicant has sacrficed for the good of others, rather than pages and pages of of “back slaps” congradulating the applicant for activities that are obviously intended to pad the resume. I can think of few greater sacrifices for a teenager than to give up something as special as the ALA Girls State in order to attend Catholic Mass and share the body of Christ.