<p>IS community service/volunteering a spot on the college app?</p>
<p>How big/small of an effect does/can it have for admissions purposes ?</p>
<p>Also, how do the top colleges view little to no community service?</p>
<p>personally, i have hundreds of hours but im just wondering how important they are.</p>
<p>
Not on the Common Application (or any other college application I’ve ever seen). On the Common App, you’ll be asked to list your ECs (up to ten) with an estimate of how much time you spent on each one. You won’t be asked for documented volunteer hours, or for a “total” number of volunteer hours. So you won’t be given a chance to say, “I have 1000 volunteer hours.”
Some high schools require volunteer hours for graduation, and some scholarships might ask about community service specifically.
Your ECs can involve community service, but they don’t have to. Community service is not privileged over other kinds of ECs. </p>
<p>From a Yale admissions officer ([source](<a href=“Q. and A.: College Admissions - The New York Times):”>Q. and A.: College Admissions - The New York Times)):</a></p>
<p>“The thing we are looking for outside the classroom is not a series of check boxes on a resume; we’re looking instead for a high level of engagement or leadership in whatever it is that the student cares about most. For some students, community service is at the forefront of their extracurriculars, in which case we pay a lot of attention to what they have accomplished in that area. For other students, some other passion or interest holds primary sway, and we evaluate the engagement in that area. We know that very few students can fully engage more than one or two primary activities at a high level. Though it is fine for a student to have varied interests, a significant number of students make the common mistake of spreading themselves too thinly in a resume-building exercise.” </p>
<p>@halcyonheather
so you can only say volunteering is an EC but you can’t put how many hours?</p>
<p>then how would you show that it is the “forefront of one’s extracurriculars”?</p>
<p>You wouldn’t have an EC labeled “volunteering.” You’d have separate ECs labeled “volunteering at Place A” and “volunteering at Place B.” You can put an estimate of how many hours you spend per week on each of your ECs, but there’s no place to say the total hours.</p>
<p>can you say how many weeks or years that you volunteered at those places?</p>
<p>You can say how many hours per week and what grade (or what summers).</p>
<p>do you think that volunteering as a top EC would sound appealing or do you think it should be secondary/tertiary or lower?</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>?</p>
<p>
It would have to be more than just signing up to volunteer somewhere. You’d need to demonstrate focus, accomplishment, and ideally some kind of leadership. </p>
<p>For example, if you are going into Biological Sciences, tutoring Honors/AP Bio kids after school ~4 hours a week could be something more substantial than just ‘Soup Kitchen’.
@halcyonheather </p>