Originally published in American City Business Journals

By Jen O’Neal

The next time you invite your teenagers on a family vacation and they say they’d rather stay home with friends for the summer, remind them that traveling could help them get into college.

The experience of traveling, whether domestically or internationally, is no guarantee that your children will be a lock with a college admissions officer, of course. But if, by chance, their travel experiences are transformative — and many are in some form or another — they might have a leg up on the competition.

I am a big believer that travel is one of the best educations a person can get, and the impact of travel on children is invaluable and incalculable. Here are three ways that travel can have a positive influence on children and teens.

Travel broadens the mind: Sure, excellent grades and test scores, as well as playing sports and volunteering, are commonplace among applicants at highly competitive schools today. Travel, however, can be advantageous if it can be deftly documented into an admissions essay.

In other words, a week on the beach in the Bahamas might not be very influential with an admissions dean. But if a trip to the Louvre and Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris made your son decide to take up art history instead of business, or if a vacation to China prompted your daughter to change her language study preference from French to Chinese, well, that might just be enough to get additional attention during the cutthroat college admissions process.

The college admissions process often involves writing personal essays. This is the perfect opportunity for your teenagers to share stories about where they’ve traveled, highlight what they learned along the way, and project how those experiences will influence their college careers.

Travel leads to new skills: Experiencing a new language stretches kids’ growing minds. Unlike adults who often find speaking and listening in a foreign language to be exhausting, navigating a language is more fun for kids and teens. Their young brains are receptive to carving new neural pathways as they hear new sounds and try to make sense of them. They may even learn words that represent concepts that don’t actually fully exist in English, which will push their limits of comprehension and strengthen their abilities to grasp new and complex ideas. It also will give them an appreciation of what it’s like to be unable to communicate fluently, a valuable lesson in empathy.

It should go without saying that your kids will learn about history and culture by visiting museums, taking tours and walking the streets with you — although you may have to disconnect them from their cell phones from time to time. They also will gain first-hand knowledge of places that many of their classmates have only seen in photographs, movies or on Google Earth.

If you travel to other countries with your kids, you should also expect them to pick up some applied math skills thanks to foreign currency exchanges. I’d recommend giving them a budget and teaching them how to negotiate with street vendors. Not only will they learn how to do currency calculations on the fly, but they’ll also hone some useful bartering skills (and maybe walk away with a memorable souvenir or two along the way).

Lessons can be big or subtle: In some regions, your kids might see labor strikes or other protests in the streets. This could heighten their interest in politics and economics. And the increased presence of military personnel and police in many cities may prompt a serious discussion about the role of the military and policing at home. These shared experiences are a great opportunity to have real conversations with your kids while simultaneously making them more aware of what’s happening in the world.

Mark Twain once wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” He was right. Exposing kids to different people, cultures and ways of living may make them more self-aware, more empathetic and more socially conscious. And if they can also clearly communicate the lessons they’ve learned through traveling, they may have a good shot of putting their college applications over the top.

Jen O’Neal is founder and CEO of Tripping.com, which offers vacation homes and short-term rentals. The company is based in San Francisco.