<p>I am a high schooler, with a good GPA and good SAT/AP scores. </p>
<p>Throughout my high school life, I volunteered in Peru for two weeks. I lived with the villagers and the orphans as well. I volunteered with a non-profit organization. I also climbed the Kilimanjaro mountain in Tanzania, with two other friends. We made a one hour documentary, posted it on Youtube. Are these EC's effective, or not, when applying to university? </p>
<p>“I volunteered in Peru for two weeks. I lived with the villagers and the orphans as well. I volunteered with a non-profit organization.”</p>
<p>Nope</p>
<p>“I also climbed the Kilimanjaro mountain in Tanzania, with two other friends. We made a one hour documentary, posted it on Youtube.”</p>
<p>Maybe. Sounds like an interesting topic for some supplements.</p>
<p>@Lilliana330 Why?</p>
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<p>These experiences, how you grew, what you learned, could make material for parts of an essay. If your descriptions in the essays will not be trite, but authentic and interesting then the experiences sound promising to me. Not easy essay topic but doable.</p>
<p>The first one has been soooo overdone that college’s don’t think it’s special anymore. You can use it, but don’t center your whole app around it.</p>
<p>Second one sounds like a unique experience. Not big enough* for a main essay (unless you have some clever twist in mind), but certainly interesting enough for a supplement.</p>
<p>*By big enough, I mean character-defining</p>
<p>Watch out for this:
From “Why Your Brilliant Child Didn’t Get Into The Ivies”:
Your child’s application stinks of privilege. You had the best of intentions when you sent your son or daughter to Oxford last July to read the classics. But guess what? The colleges, who eventually are happy to accept your $200,000, aren’t thrilled about $11,000 summer programs, even the life-changing ones. Outward Bound now looks dubious as well – it used to be about achieving clarity through eating bark, but now could be a euphemism for “troubled teen.” And forget those service opportunities in Central America – the whole isthmus is now frowned upon.</p>
<p>A lame essay. Admissions officers are sick of reading essays about the challenges of building a latrine in Guatemala (see above) or how “I found the people of (insert name of developing country) to be exactly the same as in my home town of Greenwich, CT.”</p>
<p>Here’s the full article:
<a href=“Why Your Brilliant Child Didn't Get Into The Ivies | HuffPost Life”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>I wasnt planning to use it in my essay, I was going to put them on my extra credit list on my resume. </p>
<p>So many people use that whole service trip to Central America/Africa/Poverty stricken country. </p>
<p>Of course it will not hurt you in any way, unless that is what your whole application is centered around. Colleges will probably not care much for it. </p>
<p>
I’ve heard there is a band of colleges where it will help. The most selective college, no. As already mentioned, this is trite and overdone. However their are many lower-tier colleges that really want to get kids willing to pay full-sticker. Parents that will pay for overseas trips in the hope they look good to adcoms are exactly the kind these colleges want to see; not too knowledgeable about college admissions (so they can be persuaded the college is doing them a favor by admitting their kid) and with a lot of disposable income. </p>
<p>Extra credit list? what?</p>
<p>Don’t say you lived with them if you were there 2 weeks. You visited. Hyperbole doesn’t sit well.</p>
<p>I think it must have been interesting to go each year, as you grow yourself and having return visits.</p>
<p>@BrownParent, I think you may have misunderstood. I think OP did only one 2-week poverty-tourism trip to Peru during the HS years, not 2 weeks every year. Then another year to Tanzania.</p>
<p>Well, that’s not what he said, though, right? Which, monkey boy?</p>
<p>I took a volunteer trip to Peru every year in high school.</p>
<p>monkeyboy: to the average outsider, what do your experiences tell us about you and your upbringing? You realize there exists vocal criticism about “volutourism” and the $1,000s spent on flying here and there – when often, the $ can be spent locally or just donated to the target need.</p>
<p>For instance: what is the annual income of one adult male in those villages you visited in Peru? And I’m sure you found them working pretty hard for that money too, didn’t you? And yet, what was the cost of one of your trips to visit them?</p>
<p>I’m not saying your family doesn’t have a right to spend money how they want – but you should be aware that most of the world would look at your trips askance and wonder if you have any notion about income inequality. Hopefully yes. Perhaps no.</p>
<p>IMO the fact that you went back to the same place every year is kind of interesting. You can write about the changes you saw and how you perceived and could help differently as you matured. And the Kilimanjaro climb/youtube video is an interesting and less typical activity. If you parents had the means to give you these opportunities and you took advantage of them, that is a plus. I don’t think any of them will get you into college, but you should include it on your application. Hopefully you also have ECs that you are involved in during the school year as well.</p>
<p>Conversely, being a full-pay student is EXTREMELY attractive for many, many colleges.</p>
<p>I think the OP meant “extra curricular” list, not “extra credit”. No problem to list them on your application, but they DO reek of privilege (even going back year after year) UNLESS you earned the money yourself to go back. I personally would avoid them in the essay… overdone, hard to reveal about yourself in any more than a cliche way.</p>
<p>If you’re asking whether the mere fact that you have done these things is something that will help you, no. You can’t just wave these experiences in front of college admissions officers and expect them to say “why, you must have been terribly enriched by those experiences! We definitely want you here!”</p>
<p>What you have to do is show that you actually learned something from them – that you grew as an individual, or learned a different perspective, or something. That’s what the volunteering in Central/South America used to stand for, because it used to be that that was something very few people did. Now that there are so many programs offering these experiences to high school kids, it no longer means the same thing. Also, before kids all over the country started beefing up their volunteering resumes, volunteering used to mean that you really cared enough about helping people to do it even though you reaped no reward for it. Nobody can assume any longer that volunteerism is totally disinterested.</p>
<p>If these experiences really meant something to you and you can articulate that, then great, say something about that in your essays.</p>