<p>Thread Title. I'm just curious.</p>
<p>I think it depends. If you have an extracurricular activity (not volunteering, but a sport or an art or something else) that you are obviously passionate about and that takes up most of your available time, or if circumstances in your life are such that you have to spend many hours a week at a job -- then I don't think volunteering is so important. If there isn't any special passion like that, or pressing need to work, then I think volunteer hours can be more significant, especially if it is a committment over some length of time. It shows that you were active and invested in some arena of life outside your own personal sphere.</p>
<p>If it looks like you're just cranking out to volunteer time to fill out a resume, I'm not sure it helps much. Or at least that's how I would think about it if I were an admissions officer... which I'm not. ;)</p>
<p>Don't volunteer just to slap it on a college application. You shouldn't have the mindset of "How will this look? If it doesn't look good, I won't do it." You should just do what you like to do.</p>
<p>If you do volunteer, you should try to make a significant effort at it. I read that it doesn't make much difference, since so many people do volunteer work, unless you put in an unusually large amount of time and effort into it.</p>
<p>In most cases, I don't think it's that important, as long as your application shows dedication and commitment in other areas such academic, ECs, work. You have to wonder, though, whether admission committee members begin to place weight in that area when there's a tie between certain candidates in terms of objective qualifications such as GPA or SAT/ACT scores. It's when the adcom discussion turns to --- what else can we say about this applicant? --- that areas like volunteerism (community service) or working a part time job or doing more than one EC may come into play.</p>