<p>I think it’s pretty clear that the OP doesn’t have any real desire to help. I understand that community service makes a college application look better, and I understand that playing the game is a fact of life. But when you play the system and abuse community service as another meaningless extracurricular to point that you have to ask yourself if you’re “wasting your time” or if “it makes a difference,” then you’ve truly lost sight of what’s important. I’m not advocating that you do community service just to do community service (though ideally I would), I’m merely suggesting that if you’re going to dedicate 700 hours of your life to something as valuable as community service, you shouldn’t have to ask if you’re “wasting your time” or if “it makes a difference.”</p>
<p>Lastly, like Macarenaps already said, your list of achievements comes with money. It’s not impressive if someone who comes from a wealthy family does all those things. Noticeably absent from your laundry list are HONORS that don’t come attached with money. If we take out all your volunteering hours, then you’ve basically just gone to other nations and done research. So, travel is expensive. Anyone could do it. Research. Did you win any awards? Getting published isn’t hard (don’t try to tell me it is, I think I would know). Have you done any olympiads? Gone to TASP/RSI? Intel? Siemens? Davidson? Scholastic Writing? Nationals in debate? Presidential Scholar (I know you can’t get this yet)? The list goes on and on…I know that people get into college all the time without these honors, but you seem to have accomplished all these amazing things, but upon examination, they possess no real value and say nothing about what your passions are.</p>
<p>@anonymous93: While I don’t care much about if you believe in me or what I do, I wont stand to be called fake or ingenuine. until 3 years ago, no one wanted to do policy debate at our school because of the horror stories of how difficult and time consuming it is. I chose it because I hadn’t heard these stories yet. and I go to a school which happens to have a huge, successful speech team, but small debate team. we get a lot of funding because of how successful we are. I choose to do so many ECs and so many volunteer hours because I want the chance to help people. After I get into a good medical school I will have the opportunity to help people. Anyone who thinks that volunteering as a high schooler makes as much or more of an impact on the world than volunteering as a physician is wrong. I’m not about to give up all higher education so I can make a very very minuscule difference in the world when, by becoming a doctor, I could make a big difference in my community. And to think that I live my life to get into college is an idea which has no basing in what I’ve written. By saying that because I volunteer so much, I obviously have no life is contradicting yourself. Who says that volunteering can’t be fun? My friends volunteer at the same times, in the same places, doing the same duties as I. Why not be productive while having fun? When I asked if the extra 150 hours will matter much, I didn’t mean it to seem like I don’t value volunteering. As you can tell from the courses I take, I must have to study a lot. Sometimes I find it enjoyable to not stay up until 2 AM every night working out Physics equations and practicing Spanish tenses. Lastly, do you think that not reporting your volunteer hours was a good idea? You could have gotten scholarship money which you likely deserved. Congrats on being such a sanctimonious guy and making your parents spend thousands of dollars more on your education!</p>
<p>Also, it is naive to think that most people do volunteering just to help their community. What do you expect me to do? Volunteer, raise money for vaccines, help sick orphaned children, etc. and not put it on my application because by doing so I am just proving I don’t really have a desire to help the community? Why does it make a difference if I come from a wealthy family? Should only people who 1) come from a poor family, 2) do volunteer service and not tell anyone about it, and 3) manage to show an intense passion for something (must be more intense than spending 600 hours volunteering in a hospital setting, shadowing many surgeries, raising money for vaccines for villagers, and providing medical care to orphans) get accepted to top colleges?</p>
<p>I believe you about the debate captain thing. I’m just saying that no one cares. Good for you and all, I think it’s great that you started a policy team but it pales in comparison to other accomplishments.</p>
<p>As for your community service, you essentially just said “I won’t volunteer until I’m a successful physician because that is the only time that I can make a difference. I’ll just wait until later.”</p>
<p>THAT is exactly why you’ve missed the whole point of volunteering. You don’t volunteer to make a huge difference. You do it for the CHANCE to make a “very very miniscule difference” on someone else’s life. Even if you never do, the opportunity to change someone’s life for the better is WHY you volunteer. That miniscule chance that you might do something for ONE person is why you volunteer. Really, you make volunteering out to be something you do for attention and to make a grand impact. Obviously, the more people your impact, the better, but why is impacting one person’s life not worth it? Why is a global impact necessary? Is it okay that you’re using community service as a means to meet an end NOW because in the FUTURE, you’re going to pay it back? I think not. You’re lucky if you make a small difference in one person’s life. Why is it that a physician can do so much more than a high school student? Personally, I’ve actually raised money for vaccines for third world nations, I’ve gone to LA to build houses, I’ve spent over 1000 hours in a hospital, I’ve gone to Mexico to teach English, I’ve gone to Kenya to help dig wells for water, I’ve worked at a camp for mentally disabled children, I raised money to start an orphanage with the help of many many other people, and after all of that, if I’ve only reached ONE person, then I would consider myself lucky. That one person will be someone who might not have had the same opportunities without me. And that is why community service, at any level is invaluable. You don’t need to graduate from medical school to make a difference. If you wanted to make a difference now, you would be able to. That’s the problem with you and your extracurriculars. You do things that are easy for you, that indicate no depth or passion. Instead, your extracurriculars are filled with things that more or less just come easily to you. But I digress. You clearly don’t value volunteering.</p>
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<p>YOU said volunteering can’t be fun. You asked if you were WASTING your time because you didn’t think that colleges would care. Okay, so maybe you didn’t mean it that way. But you said it, and that’s how it came off, and I’m willing to bet it was a Freudian slip. And you just called volunteering a “duty.” Like an obligation or a mandatory activity that you’re slaving through.</p>
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<p>I think I already addressed this. I said that I would never ask you to not report your hours. But when you volunteer for 500+ hours and you’re still wondering if you’re making a difference or if you’re wasting your time, then you’ve missed the entire point of volunteering and you’ve been dawdling around doing meaningless work. There is nothing to say that you can’t do things to benefit people and yourself, but when your drive to USE community service to get into college obscures the value and the meaning of volunteering, THAT is when you have a problem, and THAT is when you begin to demean the value of volunteering. You’ve clearly missed the whole point of volunteering. No person who truly enjoys volunteering would EVER ask if they are wasting their time or if they are making a difference. So I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be proud of your community service or that you shouldn’t let colleges know. I’m implying (more than implying, I hope) that you allowed your selfish motivation remove any true value from your community service. And that is more than depressing.</p>
<p>I hope you mature by the time you apply to college. I just have to say that the whole college application experience was more than humbling. There are SO many driven, talented, intelligent people. I’m never going to be better, or more successful than them, but I don’t need to be. When you begin applying to colleges, you’re going to realize that there’s a whole world outside of you (shocking!) and that there infinitely many people who are just as, if not more, accomplished than you, you’re going to be in for a shock. And THOSE people have learned things from their experiences. The small things that we all do matter, if we let them. You’re demeaning your own soon to be 700 hours of community service by saying that it doesn’t matter right now and that you’re only making a miniscule difference. I doubt you’ve failed to change someone’s life. You just don’t appreciate how important that is. Which is quite possibly the saddest thing that I have heard.</p>
<p>omg… @ anonymous93, do not be too harsh about judging indiya. You are only basing yourself on what she has posted and the list of things she has done. </p>
<p>@ indiya. To be sincere, adcoms will be really impressed when they see your app. But there is a reason they ask you to write essays or have interviews. the reason is to get to know you better and find out if you really do the things you do with a purpose that goes beyond college admissions. With all my best intentions, I really wanted to tell you to PLEASE, never do any type of EC ONLY, to get into college or into med school. You should do it because of other reasons. This might be you are really passionate about the medical profession and you want to gain insight on what serving people consists of, you are truly altruistic and you want to start being part of the change, etc. Bear in mind how someone you would feel if someone where using your underserved conditions to gain college admission… I am not saying you do, but just bear that in mind. </p>
<p>You have had WONDERFUL opportunities, I hope you have taken advantage of them and also that you have done them out of vocation. You do not need to be a doctor to help people, you can be many things as well. Just remember that doctors are no superheroes, they are just people who go and help the sick. We are there to serve others and nothing more. </p>
<p>All I am asking you, with my best interest at heart, without further criticism, and for your overall academic happiness is to really value the philanthropy in these activities. Making connections with other people, getting to understand them as human beings, etc. Reflect on that, and the best of luck to be the person you want to be.</p>
<p>Fair enough. I understand that I was perhaps too harsh. However, I still feel as though what I said was bad, but it’s not as though I based it off of nothing. If indiya really cared about community service, he/she would be able to justify the hours of meaningless activity with something other than “I’ll do what I need to to get into college now, and help other people later.”</p>
<p>yes, I mean, I 100% agree on your views about community service, and feel indignant when someone treats this in such a cold way. But then again, our comments are supposed to help indiya in what they can without being too judgmental. Lets just hope she does well and lives life to the fullest. College admissions are not everything in life, and I happened to discover that ,thank God ,early in highschool, as I felt empty when I soon found out that I was stressing about thinking if college adcoms where going to like my ECs or not. Then I just thought that what I really needed was to be true to myself and my dreams beyond college. And that is why, experimenting and then discovering what I found truly fulfilling really helped me enjoy HS to its fullest and write quite honest and genuine essays about how I discovered who I really was.</p>
<p>My original comment that “it might be a waste of time” was unclear. Most of my recent hours have come from the hospital where I do “miscellaneous tasks” such as sending letters and answering telephone calls (notice both of these tasks are only done by a volunteer because the hospital wants to cut back on expenses. ie these really don’t help anyone but the company at all). I wanted to stop volunteering at this specific place because I have so much coursework. </p>
<p>I never said ““I’ll do what I need to to get into college now, and help other people later.””
What I meant by one of my comments was that doctors have the ability to help more people than a simple high school student (remember that before I mentioned hs students can really only help a little bit). If one’s ultimate goal was to help many people (and they enjoy science) then it would make sense to become a doctor. Of course, in order to become a doctor, you need to get into a college which will prepare you to get accepted to medical school. That why I want to gain hours. so I can get into a good college (so I can become a doctor to help a larger group of people). I never meant that volunteering in general should only be about college admissions. Although, a “volunteer service” of filing papers, mailing letters, and answering phone calls really just is about college admissions as it is impossible to truly feel like you are doing community service while doing it.</p>
<p>but now that is cleared up (i hope). could anyone give me any suggestions? or am I screwed because the deadline is too soon? </p>
<p>And for the record, my family didn’t pay for my flight to India to help orphans and distribute vaccines. I went purely on donations which I collected from various sources (ex: car wash~ yes I know, very unoriginal.)</p>
<p>I re-discovered my true altruistic spirit, as I have been like that since as long as I can remember haha. Always wanting to be president of Peru (where I come from) since I was 6, and always thinking about the way to help children or beggars who ask for money at every stoplight around the city (Now I want to give back to my country with my future medical education, because you cannot imagine, there is SO much to do. And if you can do something, then you should). That is why I was in the MUN. However while being there, I also understood that politics was definitely not my path, as it was excessively tied up to economic interests. That was a real turnoff :S, I really was not happy about having to condition solutions according to alliances between countries, etc, yet I enjoyed it and learned a lot as well and how the world works :D. I also understood my interest in science, especially biology (wohoo!), and how interesting the human body is. I have to confess that my IB BIO HL exam was so much fun. Really, I loved it, and I loved to learn the content in it. That is why I am thinking about being a physician, and this desire was reassured when I went to workshop for aspiring med students at a local Uni. It was absolutely the BEST OF ALL TIMES!!! We saw corpses being studied, we took some clases and I felt it just was meant to be for me. It was just what I wanted, the perfect mix between serving and learning about science.</p>
<p>Finally, and most importantly, I learned to revalue my artistic side, and I learned that I did not have to sacrifice this interest entirely. I have done ballet since I learned to walk, I love to paint, analyze literature and most of all SING. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE TO SING! OMG I GET EXCITED!!! hahahaha Every time I experience the arts, its like a cathartic experience that goes through my soul… something inexplicable, and I learned to embrace that and be certain that I can both explore the arts as well as science and service. That is why I chose Harvard, because I felt they understood me.</p>
<p>indiya-- i’ve learned that no matter what your chance thread looks like, people are going to tear it apart and nitpick at it until you question yourself, your own decisions in high school, your current committments, etc. you’ve obviously accomplished many things and are very bright, but don’t let the whole mentality of “what will boost your chances” get in the way of doing the things of what you do and how you do them. continue to do your best, and work hard on your applications. ultimately, only you will learn whether you had a “good” chance in the first place come next april. even when you don’t get the results you want, you can’t say that an extra class or another 300 service hours could have gotten you into harvard because i doubt it would ever boil down to such concretes like that–admissions is much more subjective than we tend to think. however, you can, from then, learn and move on. </p>
<p>:) and yes… i’m sort of being a hypocrite because i am freaking out about my decision that comes out in two weeks, but likewise, i’ve been telling myself the same thing i’ve told you to calm myself down.</p>
<p>@ indiya… I will repeat my suggestion, the one I made a long time ago:</p>
<p>“@ indiya, I think that at this point, your app is more than superb. If you want to stand out though, I recommend you do so in your essays. You MUST have passion for what you do, or else, everything will feel like an empty list of things you’ve been doing JUST to impress admission officers. Show them who you are. You will definitely have a chance if you show them that you are someone that has a vision and really reflects on his/her experiences rather than someone who is simply completing 700 volunteering hours because it will look good.” Show the reasons behind all these ECs and classes. i.e and why you chose to do them, why are they special for you, what have you learned, why where you seeking such a life experience in India, etc. I believe its all about the essays now. Best of luck!</p>