<p>Hi,
I'm an immigrant and I moved to the US about 3 years ago. Since community service is not encouraged in my country as in the states, I never did anything for the community for the past 3 years. Recently, I decided to volunteer at a non-profit company that provides free food for poor people. I have about 13 hours so far. I am going to be a senior this fall and I don't think I will accumulate hundreds of CS hours by October.
I did some research and found that "it's not about quantity but quality". Let's say I have 20 hours of community service when I apply to colleges this fall. How can I explain that I didn't really volunteer that much. How can I tell the adcom that community service is not encouraged in my country and that I finally started doing something 3 years after moving. My primary concern was to learn the language and to adopt to a new culture and lifestyle. Do they provide students with some free space to explain that on the application? What would be your advise?</p>
<p>Talk to your counselor and have him/her explain how you had to adjust to a different environment before you started community service in his/her recommendation letter.</p>
<p>Most colleges don’t care if you do any community service.</p>
<p>I have decent grades and I was thinking to apply to UConn, RPI, WPI, Cornell, NYU Polytech and maybe one more Ivy school. So does it really matter?</p>
<p>For the Ivies, it’s probably gonna matter somewhat, because they like to see students who will make a difference in the community. However, you are right in saying it is not quantity, but quality, and given your circumstances, I’m sure that it could easily be overlooked.</p>
<p>For schools that factor in ECs, it’s the level of involvement, not necessarily the event (e.g community service). An applicant might have to work in her parents’ restaurant for 30 hrs/week. No community service there – but that wouldn’t be held against her.</p>
<p>Should I just list it on my resume and mention that I worked like 4 hrs/week during the summer and not mention it in the essay but rather talk about my experience with moving from one country to another and how it affected/changed my life?</p>
<p>well, I have some ECs: volleyball for 4 years, 3 years of engineering club and math league, 2 years of summer jobs. I also worked for my uncle as a website editor for 2.5 years and now he’s giving the website to me because he doesn’t have time for it. I’m going to own the website and keep it alive. Since the website is dedicated to a specific community I will be contacting different companies and local businesses and offer them to post their ads on ‘my’ website (this website is now 9 years old and is pretty known in the community). </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Do you think it could be a good supplement to my ECs/increase my overall chances of getting into a high-ranking school (Ivy)?</p></li>
<li><p>Since volleyball is a spring sport in my school, should I mention that I’ve been playing it for 4 years even though I have not (technically)?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>bump, 10 chars</p>
<p>"An applicant might have to work in her parents’ restaurant for 30 hrs/week. No community service there – but that wouldn’t be held against her. "</p>
<p>In fact, for the relatively few colleges that factor things like ECs, jobs, community service into admission, having to work 30 hours a week for a family business would be considered a strong admission factor.</p>
<p>what if you own that business even though you didn’t start it? :)</p>
<p>and this too: “Since volleyball is a spring sport in my school, should I mention that I’ve been playing it for 4 years even though I have not (technically)?”-like mentioning that I’m going to play volleyball in spring in advance?</p>
<p>You could say, “plan to be on spring team,” but don’t act like you’re already on it.</p>
<p>Of course if you own a business, you should include that info.</p>
<p>but when they ask you to list how many years you’ve been doing such and such, how an I supposed to write “plan to be on spring team” on the application?
thank you!</p>