<p>How much community service is needed for it to be a serious hook? If I have 500+ hours, is that a hook? What about 1000 hours?</p>
<p>Community service isn’t a hook, it’s an extracurricular. It also can just about never equal a hook unless you are noticed nationally. Going to your local soup kitchen and volunteering for 500-1000 hours is great, but creating a soup kitchen gets both a ton of notice and is unique. If you just have 1000 hours of random community service it doesn’t help much because a) it can be easily falsified, b) it is actually more common than it sounds, c) there is no leadership shown. However if you can become say a coordinator for a Salvation Army bell ringing cycle(near impossible to do unless homeschooled), or creating say a charity is the only way I would see community service affecting your admissions. However, if you have the time to do community service, then do it.</p>
<p>It’s not a hook.
Depending on what you do, it can be evidence of character, willingness to take on responsibility, committment, and a desire to help others. Those can indicate how you face challenges and make decisions- and whether you gve a hoot about the next guy. And, these qualities are important to adcoms.</p>
<p>It’s not the hours. It’s the effort. It’s more about climbing out of your comfort zone, going beyond the “show up and count your hours.” Want to share what you’ve done?</p>
<p>I’ve been a volunteer at the American Red Cross and have taught classes to children regularly on first aid. It’s something I really enjoy doing and involves some degree of leadership. </p>
<p>I’ve been a volunteer at a museum. I give tours and am on the missing child squad and the fire safety squad. </p>
<p>There have been moments in both of my volunteering works that have really taught me important things about myself and the world together. It has truly changed my outlook on certain points of life. I am not a person who does community service for the hours, although they are nice. I do it for the experience.</p>
<p>Missing child squad at the museum? Sounds like an interesting essay. Def unique. </p>
<p>I think both are good examples of outside ECs and will make a good impression. Each appears to be something you had to pursue (as opposed to showing up at a school club meeting.) Also, each requires some skill (as opposed to, say, accepting coats at a coat drive.) And, in both cases, if you’ve continued these over time, I would assume adults who oversee your work are satisfied with your performance and committment. If they add to 500 hours, it’s a great start. Even if it’s less, these are good picks. You probably have more you could mention. Even a handful of small activities can either reflect your motivation- or sometimes, they add up into some larger category. We don’t know how often you did these- whether most of the hours occured over summer or whether it’s long-running.<br>
Good Luck.</p>
<p>the vast majority of US colleges admit based on stats. your EC list isn’t even looked at by those. FOr the few that do consider them, your comm svc EC isn’t out of the ordinary. Better to spend time cranking out As and more test prep than to try to boost your 500 hours to 1000.</p>
<p>I thought we got past the “only stats count” thing when the ED results came out.</p>
<p>Community service is only a hook if you’ve gotten a state award or something. That’s it.</p>
<p>can i bump this and ask about if you have the president’s volunteer service award is that a hook?</p>
<p>Sorry, but it isn’t. For one thing, the award is primarily based on volunteer hours, rather than what the volunteer accomplishes. Even being your state’s honoree for the Prudential Spirit of Community Award, which focuses more on impact, wouldn’t rise to the level of a hook.</p>
<p>Community service is not a “hook” but it will be a strong EC. Hooks are generally something that the school is especially looking for – like legacy students, URM, football players etc.</p>
<p>So being half Hispanic counts as a hook? Yay, nay?</p>
<p>I think it’s incorrect to regard URM status as a hook, more as a plus factor for a given set of test scores. By hook, it’s generally meant a high or guaranteed chance at admission. URM status doesn’t grant that to anyone except maybe the very highest of the URM candidates (35+ ACT, 2350+ SAT) from very poor backgrounds, and even not then.</p>
<p>You’d be well served by not worrying about hooks and concerning yourself more with finding schools 1) where your stats fit in and 2) that your family can afford.</p>
<p>This is a three and a half year old thread.</p>