<p>A lot of mine are undocumented and happened in freshman/sophomore year...</p>
<p>I heard that even though it's largely based on the "honor system", if a college DOES choose to do random checks on students, they call the guidance counselor first to verify.
But how would my guidance counselor know? Especially if the volunteering wasn't through a school organization, if it were somewhere outside? That doesn't make any sense.</p>
<p>I don't feel like only including my documented hours because there's a big difference between the two and I don't want all my hard work to be for nothing. Just to be clear, my hours, even with the undocumented ones included, is not an unreasonable amount, not over 300 hours, so I don't think I will look suspicious. But on the other hand, if I'm one of the ones they decide to randomly audit, won't they assume I'm lying since I don't have proof? I'm not sure what to do.</p>
<p>In an interview, mostly local alum interviews, they may skirt around your volunteer activities. If you make fatal mistakes, they will aware that and report on it. You will never hear from that College again.</p>
<p>intparent tells the truth. Any calls to a GC would be to confirm “Is this kid really the stand out applicant in the last ten years?” kinda call — not “Did this kid have 50 hrs at library, 500 at Habitat and 200 at hospital?” Get real. </p>
<p>It’s one of the biggest myths HS students swallow. The no. of vol hours you NEED? </p>
<p>zero</p>
<p>So why waste a phone call on such an immaterial datum point?</p>
<p>I think the OP means that for school purposes, they need to report some volunteer hours and there is a form to be filled out and signed. Some high schools have this requirement. But the OP has put in considerable hours beyond the amount needed by the school, and didn’t get the forms filled out (no reason to). </p>
<p>I do agree that you should be prepared to talk about your various volunteer activities in an interview if it comes up.</p>
<p>The UCs do verify randomly. Only for a selected few. My first daughter didn’t include a lot of hours for that very reason. For the second kid I kept track if the hours on a doc. That was my lesson learned.</p>
<p>But what does ‘verify’ mean? Do they ask the student for a contact at each volunteer location or something? How do you “prove” it if you are a student? </p>
<p>If the OP is asking about a situation where they only had to report 20 hours per year of volunteering for school, I would not worry about actually having more hours and reporting them. The trick is not to lie, in case you are asked about it.</p>
<p>Club sports teams are difficult to list in this regard too; you can assume a certain number of hours per week normally for a certain number of weeks per year, but there is no one who can confirm whether the number is 10% high or low. We even can’t, there is no way except estimating how many hours per week and how many weeks per year, in an average year (because you don’t have room to list it separately).</p>
<p>Flat out lying about a volunteer or other activity is different. Listing hours that you spent in the car driving to a volunteer activity or sport is lying too, you can’t count transportation time, time spent overnight sleeping.</p>
<p>I have to assume that, like in the case of my son’s hours playing club soccer, there were multiple people involved in the activity and a certain amount of checking that could be done. Even if it was not as formal as a sign-in sheet every time, if someone called and asked, they’d say “yeah, OP volunteers here” or “yeah, rhandco’s son play on that team”.</p>
<p>But usually they don’t check. But usually if someone is volunteering or really doing anything more than 100 hours per year, there would be some kind of reference to it in their essays (can you imagine “I volunteered 200 hours in a soup kitchen - it meant nothing to me except to be able to put it on my college app!”).</p>
<p>Each time this question is asked, I wonder why there would’t be anybody who could verify. Are kids saying they just went off and did something nobody noticed? That does make it seem these were random, maybe one day efforts where you didn’t hold much responsibility. ?? If you were one of a hundred out on a walkathon or went to donate some coats, maybe you focus on the more important activities or just roll misc things into one line.</p>
<p>Last time I looked, agree with DrG that UC stated it checks a random percentage. </p>
<p>I don’t know. I joined my kid on a lot of her volunteer activities because she didn’t get a driver’s license until late. I would have a very hard time after the fact tracking down someone who could vouch for her (or my) volunteer time. For example, if your kid volunteered for a national political campaign sophomore year, and senior year somebody wants to verify those hours. Who in the world would you call? How could you ever track down the field organizer who might have known your kid? Another example is that my kid volunteered at a local food bank, collecting food at the farmer’s market on Sunday afternoons when the market closed. Literally every week there was a different “young adult” from the food bank supervising the volunteers. Again… verifying it would be difficult.</p>
<p>One source about UC says if you run into this for an activity, you can request a different one be “audited.” I don’t think this requires some federal level of proof. But they are apparently trying to encourage honesty on the app.</p>
<p>When my kids volunteered at a food bank, I had to sign a waiver for them. They do keep records for at least a few years, and each time my kids were there, they recorded their hours on a sheet.</p>
<p>It is for security purposes. Anyone who is running a volunteer organization informally is running a huge risk.</p>
<p>And I agree with the comment above, that “volunteering for a national political campaign” really isn’t that good unless you did enough <em>to</em> get recorded. Making phone calls for Mitt isn’t really that exciting.</p>
<p>Sure, but all kids don’t fill out the forms for all hours. My kids filled it out to get the required number of hours the school wanted. They found it a pain to ask for signatures and remember to turn them in, so didn’t for hours beyond that.</p>
<p>It depends I don’t remember the form was a pain. There was no required numbers or may be there was but it was ok to exceed it. It helped kid #2 because 4 years down the road she forgot what she did freshman year.</p>
Umm, where did you read that tidbit? Obviously one shouldn’t misrepresent themselves on an application, but there’s no need to scare students who were never planning on being deceitful in the first place. You’re making it sound like if OP stumbles over words during her interview she’ll be automatically rejected. </p>
<p>Colleges generally don’t verify the number of volunteer hours because they don’t matter that much. If you’re concerned, though, I’d talk to one of the higher-ups in your organization and let them know of your collegiate plans so that they can vouch for you if someone does decide to call (eg: Yes, so-and-so HAS volunteered here all through high school). And if this is stuff that you only did freshman and sophomore year, it’ll be a little harder to substantiate–but then again, not including them will have minimal impact on your application. </p>
<p>I think the alum interview thing may be a derivation of something I’ve written previously and as well as Northstarmom (who no longer posts). She once interviewed a Harvard aspirant who randomly dropped the fact that he/she was an officer with some random civic association. I think NSM’s son was on that committee by coincidence and thus, NSM had first hand knowledge that the interviewee fibbed. She reported it and her dictum was: Don’t exaggerate! You never know who you come across.</p>
<p>I’ve written about student interviews I’ve conducted where if a student proffers up the fact that they are a club/org founder, I discreetly inquire about the activities and org history. I ask:“What other similar orgs existed in your area and why did you feel the need to start this group rather than join up with some other existent group, therefore not duplicating efforts? What’s your plan of succession? Who are you having take over for you?” </p>
<p>I’ve had great responses. I’ve also had some pretty hokey ones, too. It may be a pet peeve of mine but the “club founder” thing is a red flag for me. Again, it goes to exaggeration or plain resume padding.</p>