<p>Hunh? Sorry but I must have skipped the kool aid line.</p>
<p>Most colleges in the USA will admit/reject their entire applicant pool solely based on GPA and test scores.</p>
<p>Others which place ECs into the evaluative process – know keenly that community service is but one of an array of possibilities for kids. The fact that it’s required by most school districts diminishes the utility for this as an evaluation factor. I think your “community service specialists” are snake oil salesmen. Period.</p>
<p>My community service was fulfilled because I held a job. Never volunteered a single hour as a high schooler. Sorry but I actually needed money. Didn’t hurt me any – no rejections.</p>
<p>You’ve got so show me that “REALLY REALLY care about community service and want to see those hours, big time” because my experience is that it’s really really “MEH”</p>
<p>Don’t infer wrongly to what I’m saying: I think voluntarism is fantastic. But if kids feel it’s an area that MUST be attended to in order to go to a college, even a very selective one, I fully disagree.</p>
<p>Maybe MIT is different but I haven’t heard a single admissions officer ever say they so much as glance at the “total number of community service hours” at the bottom of some high school transcripts. I know no one in our office does. </p>
<p>What we don’t care about are raw hours. Because that’s just you racking up hours in order to look good. </p>
<p>If you really care about community service you don’t need to worry about the number of hours. And you don’t need to even tell us “wow I really care about community service.” If you do it will come through in your app. You can’t fake it. </p>
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<p>Yep, except unlike tests, you can’t prep an honest devotion to community service. Anyone who pays for a “community service specialist” is wasting every cent they spend. </p>
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<p>I can support this from the standpoint of inculcating a culture of civic service. But it has nothing to do with the college admissions process. </p>
<p>My D just went through the admissions process. I did most of the school visits with her. Very few schools emphasized community service in their information sessions, and (as a Parent) I didn’t think it was likely to be a make or break factor.</p>
<p>The HS made more of a big deal about it, though I think it was mostly in connection with qualification for NHS (but that’s only 30 hours a year, which is minimal).</p>
<p>Chris – thanks again for the advice. It’s good to hear from someone who knows what they’re thinking about (as opposed to the rest of us).</p>
<p>One question, if I may – you mentioned in an earlier post that if a student’s scores are 700 on each SAT section the SAT will not keep them out of MIT. Is there a similar standard for GPA (I know this is harder since different HS have different grading criteria).</p>
<p>yeah I’m pretty sure most admissions officers think something like this after reading thousands of padded apps, but reality doesn’t seem to follow this and being true and ingenuous will get you screwed over. come on… the profiles for schools such as on collegeboard all list extracurriculars and extra stuff as being important to your application</p>
<p>See below for chart showing a ranking of the relative importance of 6 admissions factors, [excluding Grades and test scores] to top colleges. As you can see, factors that are important to some top colleges, like EC’s, are given a rating of 1 at some top colleges and a rating of 3 at other top colleges. </p>
<p>"On what basis do admissions committees anoint the chosen? The question has preoccupied generations of applicants. “There is no magic formula,” says Gila Reinstein, a Yale spokeswoman. “It’s just not an exact thing.” Nonetheless, the College Board’s annual survey of colleges and universities does ask them to rank admissions criteria. No surprise: high school academic record is consistently rated “very important,” as are standardized test scores (Harvard contends they’re only “important”). But what about all that other stuff? Institutions below admit the country’s best students: 25 percent of their freshman classes, fall 2004, scored 700 or more on the math or verbal SAT and placed in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes. But academics alone won’t get you in. Here’s what else matters. "</p>