How many hours of community servicer should be recommended to look good in a university applications such as Stanford?
How much extracurricular is recommended for a school such as Stanford?
The most common answer you’ll hear is that community service isn’t required at all; it’s no better or worse than any other EC.
More importantly, in my view, “hours” is a useless metric, as the purpose of volunteer work is to effectively give to the community, not to rack up points.
To illuminate the point, a few years ago I had the good fortune of attending a national event honoring two top youth volunteers from each of the fifty states, and throughout the several days of speeches and presentations, and recognition of incredible accomplishments, there was no mention whatsoever of the number of hours any of the honorees devoted to their causes. FWIW, at one lunch I was seated with four students, two of whom had been accepted by Cornell, and one other was accepted by Princeton.
In short, CS service is can be a great activity, both for college admissions and for life more broadly, but PLEASE don’t make the mistake of thinking that putting in “hours” as if to complete a sentence for a minor infraction, is any more valuable than working a part time job, learning to play guitar, or anything else in particular.