<p>Susan, you are right about the arts scholarship -- there is actually a rather generous one in my area given to dancers based on a competition. However, my daughter does not intend to continue formal study of dance in college - so she's not really a good candidate for arts scholarships either.</p>
<p>It's funny -- your post reminded me that only 2 months ago my daughter choreographed two works for a Hurricane Katrina benefit concert at her school. It had completely slipped my mind -- my daughter did it on short notice, also arranged all the music, and managed to do it all during the same time frame that she took two weeks off to travel to visit east coast colleges. I never did figure out how she managed it.</p>
<p>Chedva, Colleges use activities that fall under the community service umbrella as an indication of character and interaction with the rest of the human race. Small schools where everyone needs to work and play well together are more cognizant of these traits than the larger ones, but in general all are looking for kids who will contribute to the campus community. </p>
<p>Serving the community neednt mean volunteering at a hospital or organizing a fund raising event. It can certainly mean teaching your special skill, performing gratis, being a contributing member of any group. Your daughters experience teaching dance and skiing certainly fall into the giving back category. Perhaps she could highlight this aspect of her interests in one of her essays.</p>
<p>So, I guess my daughter's volunteer lifeguarding counts as community service. </p>
<p>But what about mandatory service programs. Many schools require a certain number of service hours to graduate. Clearly, the students are "giving back," but is the mandatory nature of the program consist w/ voluntary service?</p>
<p>"Clearly, the students are "giving back," but is the mandatory nature of the program consist w/ voluntary service?"</p>
<p>As many of us have mentioned, what exactly students do and the impact of what they do is far more important than the # of hours that they spend doing service.
Consequently, students who do service only to fulfill school requirements or to dress up their resume amass service that tends to be whatever was easiest, and that kind of hodgepodge of activities doesn't impress colleges.</p>
<p>What does impress colleges, are service activities that demonstrate leadership (such as when students start projects out of their own interests) and that have some impact -- whether on an individual (such as if a student tutored a child over a couple of years and there is a letter from the child's parents attesting to the student's efforts or the student wrote their college essay about their tutoring experience) or school (such as if the student created a school-wide service project) or the community (such as if a student created a citywide project or a project that affected a significant portion of the community).</p>
<p>I'm certain that leadership in any area impresses adcoms. But many students, even those who have sustained interest for a number of years, never become leaders - - just like playing a varsity sport for 4 years, even if you never make captain or MVP or set a school record. And one hopes that adcoms don't discount the contrib of the child who shelves books at the local library or engages in an equally mundane service project. </p>
<p>(D2, an avid rider, works at a stable teaching disabled chrn to ride. Many of the potential volunteers dropped out b/c of the unbelievable security requirements and b/c parents were unwilling to drive - - stable is not accessible via public transportation. D2 will get points for novelty, but, again, not certain she deserve more credit or that anyone ought to be more impressed by her service choice than an activity that doesn't require a parent to have shelled out much $ for riding lessons or serve as chauffeur)</p>
<p>As to my OP, I was just wondering whether, on those occasions when D1 volunteers as a lifeguard to satisfiy her school's requirement, the fact that the school mandates a certain number of hours of service, diminishes what is otherwise a signif contrib to her community (w/o her, there'd be no family swim)? If so, perhaps the schools should reconsider these mandatory service programs. (But is a mandatory service requirement any diff than mandatory sports participation - - both designed to give students some EC and service experience to list on the college apps.)</p>
<p>"And one hopes that adcoms don't discount the contrib of the child who shelves books at the local library or engages in an equally mundane service project. "</p>
<p>Such contributions are better than nothing, but top colleges would like to see that a student who started out shelving books as a freshman has been inspired by junior or senior year to start some kind of program that meets some of the library's unmet needs. An example would be starting some kind of tutoring program or program reading to young children.</p>
<p>As far as mandatory service diminishing the work, I think it depends on the kid. Some kids do community service and use some of what they've done to satisfy the mandatory high school requirement, while others would not do community service unless it was mandated by the high school. In the end, although all my kids did community service in high school, only one (the Eagle Scout) felt what he did was part of "who he was" at the time. The other two didn't feel that the services they had performed were especially meaningful--either to themselves or to the beneficiaries--and they didn't put any of it down on their applications. Everyone got into the colleges they wanted to get into. They protrayed themselves accurately, looked for good fits, and got in.</p>