<p>Hmmm this bus drive / class time comment sorta got to me.</p>
<p>I'm not sure, right now I'm leaning towards not including it, since as of late i've been writing my admission essays on the bus on my way to kendo. True I do a lot less than I would do if I was sitting at home, and often there aren't any free seats, but it doesnt stop me from at least working on it in my mind. It's not like I give my self the three finger pinch when I get on the bus, and wake up just when I'm about to get off at my stop.</p>
<p>On the other hand, no one will check, and anyway I guess even while I do volunteer work, if I do something "automatic" that doesnt require much thought I do review school work in my head if I have some major exam(s) coming up.</p>
<p>I dunno. I think I'll just count up the number of opinions for, divide by the total number of replys from different people, and multiply this by my commute.</p>
<p>Well, keep responding. So ones come across official policy on this? At any school? o_0</p>
<p>I say don't include commute time. The thing about being compensated at work for commuting time, you don't get paid your salary to commute. I think that's sort of silly...you aren't working on it so it shouldn't count.</p>
<p>On the theory that a certain amount of commute time is to be expected with just about any EC, my daughter did not count travel time of less than 1 hour from home. </p>
<p>But anything longer, she did count, on the theory that it is relevant that it took five full days (including two missed days of school) to compete in an athletic tournament on the other side of the country. </p>
<p>I think anything that precludes a student from accomplishing more than homework should be counted (outside of normal, expected travel). If you are on a plane, you can't be working the local food bank. If you're in the car, you can't be finding a cure for cancer. If you are only going to look at "productive" time, good luck figuring that out. If you're a bench warmer, do you not get to count the time you spent warming the bench during games? If half the group was late showing up to a club meeting, are you not going to count the 20 minutes you sat around waiting for them to show up? Of course you're going to count it because it was time out of your day, whether you actually produced anything or not. It's not a job. You're not getting paid. </p>
<p>It's about how you spend your time. Whether an employer pays employees for travel time is irrelevant. It's not about compensation, it's about how you spend your time. Everyone has to spend a certain amount of time getting around to their various activities. But a 2- or 3-hour drive to an event is not expected and if you have to do a lot of that, it's a serious time commitment -- time that you could be spending on something else and since you didn't spend it on something else, college admissions are going to wonder what you did spend it on if you don't count it in your EC hours. If that makes sense.</p>
<p>when you are reporting time on your EC, you put down the amount of time you were at the facility. If you are working do you put down the amount of time it takes for you to commute to the job? Unless you have a job where you get paid for travel time the answer is often no.</p>
<p>Just because the adcoms's don't check does not mean that they can't check (remember they are always free to do so) or see that there is something about your app that does not ring true and toss your application in the denied pile. Remember many people on admissions comittes lived in other places, and the world is smaller than you think.</p>
<p>wouldn't it be just your luck to come across someone who is very familiar with the EC you put down></p>
<p>Sybbie is right. Commute time doesn't count as time volunteered. When you work at a job, commute time is not on the clock. Consider it the same thing.</p>
<p>i think that you should not count the comute time in the hours volunteered, but next to it, you should write comute hours and mention how long it was. that way, they understand that you did a comute that was long to get there, but you wont feel dishonest for including it. </p>
<p>also counting half the time as a compromise is really lame. carrying half an ounce of marajuana is the same as carrying a full ounce. if you were gonna write it in go all out. i mean, if you cheat on question on a test, you still cheated on the test which will set you equal to a person who cheated on all of the test. we dont say someone is half a cheater. so if your gonna cheat, go all out, or even better, lose a point, but retain your dignity.</p>
<p>If you are traveling an extraordinarily long distance, you could note that elsewhere, but not as part of your EC hours. Your williness to travel shows commitment, but it's certainly not part of your EC, at least in my opinion.</p>
<p>If you travel for 2 hours to play with the orchestra at an orchestra contest or festival, wait around for an hour and a half for your orchestra's turn to play, play for 30 minutes, and then pack up and drive back 2 more hours, you have just invested 6 hours of your time in an activity -- and you are only going to record 30 minutes? Really? It's not like you personally selected the location--you're just told to be at such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time. It goes with the territory. It would be different if you decided to spend an hour cleaning a creek and you choose a creek 300 miles away so you could go to Disneyland after you cleaned the creek and count the drive time as an EC.</p>
<p>I would put down the 2 hours actually spent at practice.</p>
<p>If I read an application fom someone stating they spent 6 hours X # of times a week on music, I would have the expectation that they are music majors, or have some really extensive production experience (sitting first chair) to back it up and look for it to be corroborated somewhere else etc.</p>
<p>well when I volunteer as a part of churchill youth group activities, we meet at church ( or local highschool ) first then travel together. when I count these for service hours (my school keeps a record of them) the churchill gives me the time from meeting at churchill to the time we are dismissed.</p>
<p>sybbie, I think you misread what I wrote. An orchestra contest or festival is not a practice, it's a competition or performance, an occasional thing not an "X # of times a week" thing. You practice X # of times a week, but several times a year you travel, sometimes great distances, to perform. There are many youth orchestras and other music groups--as well as sports and many other types of ensembles--that demand occasional concentrations of time and travel. My son traveled to Vancouver and LA from San Francisco to play with his orchestra; my daughter travels thousands of miles a year to compete in athletic events. He is not a music major and she is not a professional athlete. These are extracurriculars. </p>
<p>I really don't see the time it takes to get to a far-flung event where you had no say in the location as being any different than the time spent, say, standing around at a track meet doing nothing. I mean, my daughter's actual time in the discus ring and shot put pit all told is probably less then 20 minutes total including warmups. Yet, she can be stuck at the track meet for anywhere from 2 to 5+ hours. What's the difference between standing around for an hour waiting for your event at a track meet and driving an hour to the track? There is no difference. It's all overhead. It's all opportunity cost. </p>
<p>I actually did know a student who flew from San Francisco to LA once a week to take music lessons from a master teacher. She is now at studying at a music conservatory. Her lessons were not "EC's" -- in fact, EC's play no role in getting into a top music conservatory.</p>
<p>Hmmm, seems that a lot of people are against it at the moment.</p>
<p>I tried to measure my commute to kendo and its about 40mins altogether per practice (1 practice = approx. 2h), so I think I won't count it for that. My commute for fencing is double on the other hand, but I'm still not sure if I should include it (since each practice is approx. 1h10mins, itd seem way too much to add 1h20mins to that).</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm not worried about adcoms checking or not since I'm in some god forsaken country in Europe. What I want to do is see if most people do such a thing or not. Because being naive and sticking to some principle while everyone else breaks it would be... well, naive.</p>
<p>Maybe it's best if I note my commute time separate from the EC time. But I can't really tell how an adcom would react to something like that, especially with such unimpressive comute times. What do you think?</p>
<p>No...the commute should not be included. Both of my kids did very extensive ECs involving music (and yes, included festivals some of which were even out of state...LONG commutes..). The time spent IN the EC was put down...not the time in the car...or plane...or bus.</p>
<p>So, thumper, if the performance was 45 minutes long and your kid missed a day of school and was out of town for 2 days, he/she only put down 45 minutes?</p>
<p>1Down2togo, I would say you would count time watching other people perform because that is related to music. But you wouldn't put down travelling/sleeping/hanging out in the area where the competition is/eating. For example, I went to a robotics competition in GA (im from MD) and what I counted for hours was not travel or total number of hours there, but how many hours the competition lasted each day. My robot did not compete that entire time, but we were working on the robot, watching other teams compete, scouting, etc. (all related to robotics).</p>
<p>That was quite random... Anyway, I just came back from the theater and saw HP4, and it was awesome. You folks should really go and see it if you've time. It was such a breathtaking break from the usual school work.</p>