<p>So reading through a lot of the 'Chance Me' profiles, it seems to me like some people live more than a 24 hour day...either that or their daily schedule is packed down to the minute, with every minute of time they've spent being in an applicable EC.</p>
<p>Seriously, i.e.</p>
<p>hospital volunteer 700 hr.
summer internship 250 hr.
tutoring kids 200 hr
working in a supermarket 800 hr.</p>
<p>Can you people explain yourselves please?</p>
<p>Hours don’t grow on trees – the impulses to exaggerate on resumes and applications do.</p>
<p>LOL, being a volunteer myself, I know just had to call these people out who have very sketchy hours…because anything beyond 300 hours is A LOT of time spent in one thing. </p>
<p>(300 hr/5 hr every day (already alot) = 60 days). If the person volunteer at this 2x a week (meaning 8x a month). It would still take ~8 complete months to get that many hours. That is some continuity there…(doing the same thing for ~40hrs every month for 8 months).</p>
<p>I bet people round in increments of 200s… 350->500…780->900 etc.</p>
<p>/sigh</p>
<p>Code: Well i actually disagree…since i am one of those people too.</p>
<p>I have 450 hours from one club alone. I’ve been doing it since freshman year and we get about 150 hours every year. My summer volunteer job since 7th grade amounted to about 300 hours. My other summer volunteer job gave me about 200. Also, school clubs do take a lot of time and i tutor during the year fours times a day for 2 hours every day…</p>
<p>My school keeps a record of practically every hour of service you do and they have to get signed, so we’re pretty legit. </p>
<p>Anyways, is my day packed to the minute? Yes and no…i actually have decent free time.<br>
Are those hours possible? Totally.</p>
<p>*four times a week</p>
<p>I also disagree… What about varsity sports? I’d assume practice is at least 15 hr/wk and if you do only two seasons that’s like 25-30 weeks a year which would mean between 350 and 450 hours a year.
What about a semi-professional sport at the national level: 30+ hrs/wk at 20 wks/yr=600 hours (and that’s a really conservative estimate)</p>
<p>Or a summer internship. If you work 6 hrs a day (which is only 9-3; some might be 8 hours or longer) for ten weeks that’s 420 hours.</p>
<p>Or just a club you spend an hour a day doing during the year. That’s 280 hours a year for a 40 week schools year. If you did it three years, you have 840 hours.</p>
<p>During the summer, you definately can reach that 500 hour mark at one organization. I mean I have about 500ish hours at the Red Cross just over 2 summers.</p>
<p>People are able to volunteer that much, they usually get the hours throughout the 4 years of high school and during the summer. I have about 400 hours from volunteering at the animal shelter, but its from volunteering several times a week over the summer for 3 summers.</p>
<p>Sort of going in a different direction here, but for things other than volunteering (like sports or major ECs), is the number of hours actually that important? Wouldn’t colleges get a better sense of your commitment and passion through essays and personal statements?</p>
<p>Like say, for being Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, there’s no way I could total all the hours I have spent/will spend this year on the paper. Sometimes it’s just working through my lunch period, other times it’s spending many hours into the night after school. I would feel stupid if I had to total all those hours.</p>
<p>I guess my point is that there are some titles that sort of speak for themselves when it comes to “time-spent”. The same would go for varsity athletes, whose time commitment is typically unmatched compared to other people in school.</p>
<p>I agreed with you that these threads must be full of mendacious lies until I started adding up my hours, just to compare.</p>
<p>I estimated my total volunteering hours at about 300 by the end of senior year. It’s not very difficult to rack up. A solid three hours a week for 40 weeks a year, 3 years gets me 360, then, since I haven’t actually kept track of my hours (I didn’t even know people did that until I came here. I thought people just volunteered) and there are probably some mad up ones in there, so I subtracted 60.
Summers, you have tons of time. I had a full time internship (from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon) the summer before my junior year, it was 8 weeks long, that’s 320 hours. Which doesn’t even begin to include all the hours I spent at home doing lesson plans, making worksheets, guided notes, homework assignments,the hours we had to spend every Wednesday at faculty things, the last week after the students left when I was often there until 6 or 7 and then at a faculty event until 11 or 12. Bleh. It was hard.
Then there’s the main event. I just did some rough math, but I think I’ve spent about 1500 hours at ballet. Ahh, I don’t even want to know what it would be if I added up my whole life, since I’ve been dancing since I was 4. I’m going to classes and rehearsals with scheduled times so I’d hope it’d be pretty obvious to I didn’t make anything up. Of course, I don’t think I would be writing about ballet in numbers of hours. Again, this is not including such events as tech week, which, over the 4 years, comes to 120 hours alone.</p>
<p>I do other stuff, like tutoring, which will be about 200 hours, and Ski Club, which is 120 (but I mean, it’s for fun. You go skiing with your friends for 6 hours, one day a week, 5 weeks a year). I wouldn’t say I have much free time, but I’m bad at time management, and I waste it all on places like here.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, “lying” about hours is what happens naturally. Americans hugely overestimate the number of hours they work, and the more hours they tell you they work, the more off they are. [Overestimating</a> Our Overworking - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124355233998464405.html]Overestimating”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124355233998464405.html)</p>
<p>i never have kept track of hours, except when required to in order to fulfill school service requirements. i think people who keep meticulous track of their hours doing community service are missing the point.</p>
<p>Its not even that weird. A lot of people work over the summer 40+ hrs a week. I’ve been working at an insurance company this summer about 40 hours every week, sometimes more. Ive been doing this all summer. Lets say it is 2 months. 8 weeks x 40 = 320 hrs already. I’m actually working more than 8 weeks (most of the summer), so im looking at a 400 hr activity in 1 summer.</p>
<p>Some of these students are prepping for careers on law:</p>
<p>[Lawyer</a> clocks 81-hour day](<a href=“http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/corrupt/81_hour_day.htm]Lawyer”>http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/corrupt/81_hour_day.htm)</p>
<p>i did harvard ssp (got 2 As, yay!), which ate up my time until early august (leaving me one month for EVERYTHING else…such as questbridge apps and volunteering).</p>
<p>/sigh</p>
<p>Hours add up quickly when the activities are a serious commitment . . . just for drama dna choir I have 700and 550 respectively.</p>