Vanessa Yolen, of Stonington, Conn., works on a Lego Mindstorms robot at the New England Institute of Technology. “I’m looking into engineering, but I’m not 100 percent sure it’s what I want to do,” she said. “This has helped. I really like it. It’s not something I think I’ll get bored with.”

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

Latrice Hampton, a 17-year-old student at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Conn., says she’s not sure exactly what she wants to do after she graduates next June — but she has a lot of interests. “I do everything; I’m in every club possible,” she said.

So during the summers, Hampton has been taking advantage of career exploration programs that are offered by many colleges and universities. She’s planning on taking two courses at Yale, in abnormal psychology and crime and punishment. At Harvard, there was a bio-medical conference. (“Good networking, but too much information,” she said.)

Last month, she was at Bryant University in Smithfield, participating in a program for black and Latino students interested in accounting, called the Accounting Careers Leadership Institute, run jointly by Bryant and the accounting firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Hampton said the program, which included a bowling expedition, a visit to the PriceWaterHouseCoopers office in Boston and a dinner cruise of Boston harbor, is the best she’s been to so far. “I should give you guys props. This is the best,” she told T. Abraham D. Hunter director of the Accounting Careers Leadership Institute at Bryant and Ann Ulett, director of campus recruiting for PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

“It’s all about knowledge, and exploring the different opportunities you have,” Hampton said. “I’m trying to find out who I am and what I like.”

For PriceWaterHouseCoopers, the program, which is free to the students, is a chance to create potential job candidates. “We’re building our pipeline,” said Ulett. “To find top talent is tough in itself. To find diverse talent, that’s even tougher. All the [accounting] firms end up chasing the same people.”

For Bryant University, Hunter said, it’s an opportunity to showcase the university and enhance Bryant’s presence, since the 41 candidates in the program range from Massachusetts to Virginia. Hunter said about a third of the students in the program will apply to Bryant.

“The program introduces students to the [accounting] field, and also gives them a taste of college life, living in the dorms . . . It’s chance for them to interact with people who are different from themselves, but equally energetic, equally involved, equally intelligent,” he said.

During the summers, colleges around the country put out the welcome mats for high school students to get a taste of campus life, and potential careers. College officials say the programs help students prepare for college and focus on career possibilities. At the same time, the programs serve as recruiting tools for the host colleges.

The College Crusade, a Providence-based organization designed to help students from low-income urban areas prepare for college, has 140 students attending courses on various college campuses this summer, including a 10-day residency at Roger Williams University, a three-day tech camp at the New England Institute of Technology, a “summer high school” at Brown University, a summer transportation institute at the University of Rhode Island and a series of three-day career exploration programs at Johnson & Wales University.

At least 500 more students from the College Crusade, about to enter sixth grade or ninth grade, are attending a program called “Ways to A’s,” designed by the College Crusade itself, at the Community College of Rhode Island this summer.

Some college summer programs are designed to prepare students for college life in general. Others, such as Bryant’s accounting institute, focus on a specific career.

“They both have their places,” said Maria Carvalho, high school program manager for the College Crusade. “Some kids want to go on to four-year schools, and need some preparation. Others want to look at a particular career. It’s not that one is more important than the other. Career and college, typically, go hand in hand.”

At the New England Institute of Technology’s tech camp, students in the mechanical engineering section designed key chains using a program called SolidWorks, and then got to watch one of NEIT’s three-dimensional printers, which then fabricated their designs into an actual object. Students also programmed robotic arms — 18-year-old Greg Gavitt, of Westerly, got his to pick up a piece of foam off a table and drop it neatly into a wastebasket — and made small robotic vehicles out of Legos.

“We’re trying to get them to think like designers, and show them the tools to be better designers,” said instructor Jennifer Hurley.

In a nearby classroom, potential architects used software called SketchUp to spiff up the exterior of a house. Kevin Hurst, 17, of Seekonk, had added a trampoline, hammock, swimming pool, motorcycle, and a barbecue grill to his virtual home.

Amanda Metzger, special events coordinator for NEIT, said the school runs the tech camp every summer, with 72 students registered this year. Cost is $25 for three days. She said it shows students some of the courses NEIT has to offer, and perhaps helps them choose a future career, particularly when they get to take part in the process. “Sitting and lecturing don’t work,” she said. “They like to get their hands on stuff.”

Charles Rogers, special assistant to the president at NEIT, said the tech camp started five years ago. “We were seeing a tremendous amount of cutbacks in public schools, especially in the area of technology,” he said. “A lot of kids just don’t get the exposure they should . . . this is a great program for kids who say, ‘What do I want to do?’ ”

Vanessa Yolen, of Stonington, Conn., and Daniel Quintanilla, of Middletown, both 17, were at NEIT for mechanical engineering. Yolen said her high school guidance counselor knew she was interested in math and science, and e-mailed her about the program.

“I’m looking into engineering, but I’m not 100 percent sure it’s what I want to do,” she said. “This has helped. I really like it. It’s not something I think I’ll get bored with.” Yolen said she made her keychain in the shape of a lacrosse stick, and built a rotating crane out of Legos.

Keeping her options open, she’s thinking of going to Northeastern: “I want to go to a school that’s big enough so that if I want to change majors, I don’t have to change schools.”

Quintanilla was wearing an MIT T-shirt, although he’s not sure his SAT scores are good enough to get in. He said he heard about the NEIT tech camp through a mailer the school sent out. His keychain was a geometric shape with the initials NEIT, and he was working on a half-track vehicle with his Legos — but he was having trouble getting the gears to mesh correctly.

Ultimately, he said, he’d like to be a bioengineer: “Instead of working with metals or plastics, you’re working with cells and tissues.”

At Johnson & Wales University, Rick Daniels, coordinator of admission events, is in charge of the summer career programs. Johnson & Wales runs three-day weekend programs in culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, accounting, business, fashion, legal studies, technology, sports events and entertainment and hospitality.

Last year, Daniels said, 827 people attended one of the career weekends. Cost is $95 for the non-culinary programs, $195 for culinary programs.

Daniels said the idea is to introduce students, who will be juniors and seniors in high school, to college academics, campus life and specific career paths. And, of course, to Johnson & Wales.

“It’s a recruitment effort, the most successful recruitment effort we have,” said Daniels, adding that more than 50 percent of the students in the career exploration programs end up attending Johnson & Wales. He said the courses try to give students as much hands-on activities as possible. In the culinary course, he said, students spend the day on Saturday cooking the food they’ll eat for dinner Saturday night.

Another advantage to the career weekends, he said, is that they allow high school students to bond with people who share their interests.

“The phenomenal thing is watching the kids come in here on Friday, looking like deer in the headlights, and then seeing them leaving on Sunday talking to everybody, exchanging e-mail addresses,” he said.

At Bryant’s accounting program last month, speakers from PriceWaterhouseCoopers did their best to dispel “myths” about accountants, namely that they are geeks who wear bowties and pocket protectors, sitting in a room all adding up figures. Instead, Ulett said, they are problem solvers, project managers, strategic thinkers, and communicators.

They can also make a lot of money. The average salary of a PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner, she said, is in excess of $500,000. Entry level hires make between $50,000 and $60,000 per year.

Latrice Hampton said she was learning a lot about accounting in the Bryant program, but she was leaning toward a career in law, ideally one that would allow her to help young people. “I see a lot of kids who get into trouble, and they don’t have proper legal advice,” she said.

But Jorge Estrella, 17, from Bloomfield, N.J., said he plans to become an accountant — and apply to Bryant. “I like the diversity of the job. There’s not just one thing you can do,” he said. Last summer, he said, he went to a program sponsored by the National Association of Black Accountants at Rutgers University.

Estrella said he heard about the Bryant program through the college admission officer at his high school. He was thinking of applying to Bryant — he said he had a friend of a friend who attended the school — and he liked what he saw. “This is by far the nicest campus I’ve ever seen,” he said.

asmith@projo.com