Compactifications of symmetric spaces have been constructed by different methods for various applications. One application is
to provide the so-called rational boundary components which can be used to compactify locally symmetric spaces. In this paper,
we construct many compactifications of symmetric spaces using a uniform method, which is motivated by the Borel-Serre compact-
ification of locally symmetric spaces. Besides unifying compactifications of both symmetric and locally symmetric spaces, this
uniform construction allows one to compare and relate easily different compactifications, to extend the group action continuously
to boundaries of compactifications, and to clarify the structure of the boundaries.