If you clock most of your community service hours the summer before senior year, would the timing make it so obvious that you were doing this to boost your resume that it would have no impact on competitive scholarship/college applications?
Do community service only if you really want to and care about the project. Unhappy “volunteers” who aren’t putting an effort into their work are no help and often a hindrance.
It is not a key to college admissions and suddenly developing an interest right before college admissions is pretty obvious as a ploy.
Although the goal would definitely be to make her more competitive for scholarships, she would still enjoy the experience and put 100% effort into it.
But if scholarship committees will disregard it because she hasn’t been doing it all along, she may as well work and get paid.
It wouldn’t be strange. After all, it may simply be a function of your getting a drivers license. However, you may be under the mistaken notion that hours this summer or whenever will make much difference at all. That’s a myth. Vol hours are commonplace and no school requires them nor will reward you unless you’re truly remarkable.
Frankly, you’re worried over nothing as far as college admissions goes. The 500 hours you bank this summer will be equal to someone else’s 40 hours or a job a Dairy Queen.
For some scholarships, it will be meaningful – not for college admissions.
@TE6E4
We are considering this with scholarships in mind, local scholarships and scholarships from schools like Duke, Vandy, USC, etc.
These:
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
Do you think it would help? and it would not be 500 hours, it would be more like 50-150, as she has other stuff going on.
Then I’d encourage it. Don’t think that they’ll look at it suspiciously or simply to “game” things. But correspondingly, if $ is an issue, some summertime employment can earn tons of money. That might be good to keep on the table too.