What is your opinion of the amount of community service hours that are acceptable for most college admissions. D20’s high school has a 15 hours a year minimum requirement which I think is very low compared to college expectations. She will have approximately 70 hours her Junior year but I see many students on CC that have 100, 200+ hours. Thoughts?
No college (or very very few) have any expectations of community service hours. Many top tier colleges value ECs, of which community service is certainly one. And it’s a good one if it’s something the student wants to do/believes in/thinks will make a difference, etc. That said, 15 hours is nothing, while 70 hours shows commitment. Is there a magic number? Not in my mind. It all depends - depends on the kid, depends on what else she has going on, depends on the activity, etc.
As I often say, students should not be choosing activities, including community service, simply because they think it will “look good” to colleges, and certainly not simply because a HS requires it. Malala’s community service looked good; most of the the rest of us just try to do what we can.
Our high school required 200 hours of commnity service for graduation. My personal opionion is that community service should be meaninful to the student. Ask your college counselor what is typical for your school.
My kids did community service…but it had nothing to d9,with padding college application or I pressing college adcoms.
It had to do with doing community service which our family thinks is important.
I don’t think the number of hours matters at all. I think it’s more about what you DO on those hours that matters.
I think some schools care about it more than others, and also that it’s one of those things to take with a grain of salt when you see some kids’ supposed numbers. It’s a piece of the story for holistic admissions but the school is likely to want to see leadership with it and/or ability to write about the experience in the essays.
Academic credentials come first and foremost. No extracurriculars, including community service, replace that. Another consideration- the type of service. In son’s day his HS required some service hours to graduate and NHS required more. Being a public school there was a line drawn between that done for a religion and other types. One can argue that things like teaching religion classes are self serving et al. Painting houses for seniors by a religious group is different.
Concerning what one does with the hours- I sure hope the elite students are spending their time enhancing their skills and not just putting in time.
Our high school didn’t require it, and my kids didn’t do much at all (just a bit of tutoring for NHS-- tiny amount, and one summer YMCA trip each overseas where they supposedly did some service). They did lots of other stuff. They both got into excellent schools. It’s all about the authentic resume. Not a check list.
The advantage of a small community service requirement in high school is that it potentially exposes young people to opportunities they would not otherwise explore. That is, it’s a benefit for those kids whose first exposure leads to greater commitment. But the number of hours, in the end, means little – it is the quality and depth of commitment that can potentially enhance a college application.
So if you are framing things in terms of number of hours of the broad category, “community service” – that really has no relevance at all to college admissions. The students who will benefit are the ones who will have a demonstrable, specific commitment that comes through on their college apps. I don’t think it necessarily matters what the students’ role is – there’s value in doing the grunge work as well as taking on leadership positions – but it does matter whether the commitment comes from internal motivation rather than external expectations, and whether it is sustained over time.
My daughter’s HS required 20 hours/year but community service/volunteerism was something that was instilled in the culture of the school (it was also a big component of our church and she had started regular volunteering in elementary school). I would say most kids in her HS did 100+ hours/year. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. I’m sure not even a fraction of my daughter’s hours made it onto her common app.
The important thing is not the number of hours, but what your daughter takes from the experiences and how she incorporates them into her ECs and interests.
I agree with @skieurope that colleges don’t have an expectation of a minimum number of hours.
See, on CC- and in so many minds- this is about hours, who’s got how many, who raised more money, what "title " etc. That hierarchical thinking is counter to the holistic principles.
They aren’t looking for some magic number of hours. It’s compassion, commitment, some impact, even small. It’s not about the easy stuff, an hour or two with Key or NHS. Or walking down the school hall to take on some task. Or once/year going to some event. It’s about seeing need around you and being willing to do something. Routinely. Local.
Don’t assume this personal quality doesn’t matter.
Btw, if you’re set on not experiencing something just because the college might value it, how do you expect the college to see the qualities in you that they look for? In real life, we prepare for our goals.
This is such an interesting question. My son attends a Title 1 school. The majority of the kids are low income, more than half are ELL. There no community service requirements at all needed to graduate from his school. Most of the “community service” type activities are kids volunteering to run things at the school. The high school also houses the magnet program for gifted students, and my son is part of that program - so there are high achieving and privileged students attending this high school. Some kids can do loads of volunteer work, some can’t.
The important thing is not the hours, but doing something that is meaningful to the student. For some that means working after school to save for college or contributing towards putting food on the family’s table - for others it means doing hours at the local food pantry.
Do what feels right and don’t worry about the number of hours.
I disagree with the idea that extracurriculars never replace academics in terms of admission.
This got me to thinking about S2’s community service hours. He was a volunteer counselor at a local archaeology day camp for a couple of summers during HS. As part of his training, he learned CPR and first aid. Four years later, he used that CPR to save my life – I dropped dead on my kitchen floor with a full cardiac arrest.
He liked being a counselor, but didn’t think CPR training was particularly necessary at the time (what are the odds a 4th-7th grader would need it, esp if there are no swimming pools at camp), but he also never expected to have to use it on his mom.
So were those hours important? Yup! Just not always in ways one would expect.
FWIW, my kids weren’t crazy about the school-generated service hours. They liked things that tied into their interests or that stretched them in new ways. I co-run a quilting group that makes quilts for a local women’s shelter. We had a freshman come who wanted to learn how to quilt, and we were happy to teach her how to make blocks and give her service hours!
My oldest did community service mostly just not to have a blank on the Common Applicaton. He worked at the senior center one summer doing various computer related things. He also did some unpaid computer programming work for a couple of med school professors which I suppose could count as community service if you wanted it to. My younger son also worked at the senior center. He ended up putting together a violin concert and teach an origami class. He also did some math tutoring during the year which he said was good for brushing up his SAT math skills.
My interpretation of the community service hours that top colleges are looking for has less to do with the amount and more to do with the character of the potential student and how they use their interests and strengths to give back and make the world a better place. Thus, kids interested in animals tend to volunteer at shelters, kids interested in sports tend to help coach, kids interested in food security tend to volunteer at food banks, kids interested in politics tend to work political campaigns, etc. As a result, kids who volunteer because they are passionate about a related activity are going to accumulate a lot of hours naturally. I also imagine that colleges are able to differentiate between a prospective student who has 100 school-mandated hours in a variety of areas and a prospective student who has 100 outside hours dedicated to a single pursuit.
My D basically had no Community Service hours. Her HS required a specialized program in 9th, internships 10/11th grade and a Senior Capstone instead of Community Service. She got into top schools and got a scholarship that most would associate with community service work.
I think Community Service is probably pretty important for many top merit scholarships you need to apply for outside the admissions application.
For my son they didn’t factor in to his college acceptances because of where he chose to go (auto admits due to grades and test scores). They did factor heavily into scholarships and getting in to a very competitive program. Working at a hospice is what we believe pushed his application over the line to be accepted into his desired program. Lots of questions were asked about it and very positive response. I think it is dependent on the student, the school, the scholarships desired, etc. Also it is important a student do what is right for them.
My student who was awarded multiple competitive scholarships had very little in terms of ECs. What she did have were international level awards.
I perceive the kids on CC looking for a magic formula. There isn’t one. Commitment to goals, character, academic integrity, internal motivation—how does the student live those?
Here’s how I see it. Do you want to take a chance because there are anecdotes out there of kids with no service or something easy, detached? Or play your own cards in a more savvy way? Which is ultimately safer, for you?
As a benchmark for the most selective schools, all IB Diploma students take at least 6 IB courses their junior and senior years (plus the capstone Theory of Knowledge class) on top of completing community service on a weekly basis. The standard back in the day was 150 hours divided equally between creativity, action, and service, but most students do more than that now. It’s part of what makes IB a program rather than just a collection of advanced courses.