My freshman year of high school I started a charity called Canoe Club Child Care that offers free child care to the families of deployed military, and fallen service men. I live in an area where it is densely populated with military families, and seeing the financial and everyday struggles of the families, I thought I could help. I didn’t start it with the intention of using it on my college applications. But I was wondering how much of an impact it would have on my admission. Thanks!
What did you learn from doing it?
It helped me to realize the struggle that military families went through. I also vastly improved my leadership and organization skills. I learned exactly what it takes to run a business, and the struggles that one faces when trying to get started.
I’m nearly certain that’s going to help you in the admissions process.
If you have an opportunity to talk about it in an essay, I’d recommend doing so. As a line item on a resume it’s impressive but if you can talk about how much you grew as a person from the experience then that would be really outstanding in my opinion.
It sounds like a very nice effort. You rolled up your sleeves for your local community, took on the responsibilities and we assume you had some impact. You can make your own decision whether you use this for the essay- or choose another equally important message for that, then describe this briefly in Addl Info. Definitely ask the GC to mention this program and your role. (It will add validation and some enthusiasm.) Best wishes.
This idea that some centerpiece effort (or circumstances) should automatically be the focus of the essay has come up a lot recently. My answer is: not necessarily. See if you can preview the Common App and supps and then think about how to make your best decisions.