<p>Would a college ever request a student's high school to verify community service hours? Last year, my kids' HS changed the list of "what counts" toward community service. Most everything done with or for a church or religious group can no longer be counted. (Participating in a Habitat build with your church counts, but teaching Bible School doesn't.) 95% of my daughter's community service is through church. She is so busy that I don't feel like making her do something else, just to be able to turn in the yellow form at school. I know she'll have to do other stuff for NHS, but that is two years away.</p>
<p>A lot of kids do community service outside of school. I've actually never heard of a school keeping track of kids' community service hours...or anything they do, actually. I had to practically live in the Activities' Office for half a year until they realized I was Key Club President.</p>
<p>So no, I don't think they would call the school to check up on that.</p>
<p>If your D is dedicated to her activities (I'm assuming she does other things that are non-community service also), she'll be fine as long as she keeps track of her hours.</p>
<p>Colleges rarely verify. in addition, with the exception of the very most competitive colleges -- the ones like HPYS that have such an overabundance of high stat applicants that the colleges can afford to pick and choose from that outstanding pool -- most colleges do not factor ECs including community service, into admission. At most, the majority of colleges factor ECs/CS into merit aid consideration.</p>
<p>Many if not most colleges also would consider teaching Bible School to be a nice EC, whether or not they consider it community service. Teaching Bible School indicates leadership and responsibility.</p>
<p>Our district has this made up distinction called the "Scholar Ambassador" ... To be designated a Scholar Ambassador at graduation, the student must take extra math and science and do X hours of community service. However, since the state of Texas recently mandated 4 years of math and science, the requirement of the "extra" math and science is moot...so now it's just a distiction for doing community service. </p>
<p>I'm wondering if any schools to which my daughter might apply would be so familiar with our school that they would wonder why my daughter is not a Scholar Ambassador. It seems silly to have daughter volunteer somewhere else just do she can have an asterisk by her name in the graduation program.</p>
<p>^If they are familiar with your school, they will also probably recognize that in any normal universe your D's church service should have counted.</p>
<p>I really doubt that they would wonder about it. Lots of schools give out awards for weird things. It's the service itself that matters, not the meaningless labels.</p>
<p>for the UCs, at least, the verification is done through the student. some kids i know got an email with a form from a certain UC school and needed to get it signed by whomever was in charge of that specific EC.</p>
<p>The UC schools claim to verify ONE piece of information from 10% of all applications, randomly selected. This "one piece" may mean a verification of a community service listing on an application or it could be something completely unrelated to a volunteer activity.</p>
<p>When I read college applications for Smith, I trusted what students told me on their application forms and rarely did any fact-checking except when I spotted an inconsistency ... e.g., the transcript or counselor reference included school activities, but some biggie on the application (e.g., "Student government treasurer") wasn't included among activities mentioned elsewhere.</p>
<p>Interestingly, however, I never caught a student in a lie. The mix-up was always on the school's end ("Oh, that Kelly!")</p>
<p>I'm not suggesting that no applicant ever pulled the wool over my eyes. Certainly, if a 3-hour/month hospital volunteer wrote down "3-hours/week," I wouldn't have been the wiser. But the little fact-checking I did always resulted in the student being honest, even when my cynical side didn't expect it.</p>
<p>Most colleges will not verify your hours. At best, they will verify the "big ECs" on your application, since those can really make or break you.</p>