I’ve stopped doing community service activities for a year because I’ve been busy with other commitments, and I wanted to know how important community service is when it comes to college admissions. For the past two years, I’ve tried many different community service clubs and activities, none of which I really liked, so I stopped doing them. I’m currently involved in some clubs and extracurriculars, but nothing strictly defined as “community service.”
Should I find a community service activity to be involved in now?
Community service is generally no more or less important than any other EC. Don’t become involved in service just for college admissions - colleges can generally tell and will be unimpressed. Do ECs that you enjoy - those will make you a stronger applicant than forced ones.
Commitment is generally more highly valued than bouncing around between clubs when it comes to college admissions.
There are plenty of posters who have gotten into great colleges with no community service. Often, they work instead, or they are athletes, or heavily involved in something very time consuming outside of school. My feeling is that anyone who is privileged enough to have spare time to engage in non-meaningful ECs that they arent heavily invested in, should make the effort to do volunteer work of some sort. It shows that you care about something or someone other than yourself.
Will colleges see it that way? Some do, some don’t. You can look at a college’s common data set to see if they consider volunteering in their admissions criteria. If I were an AO, (which I am not), given two equal applicants, I am choosing the one who volunteers over the one who does a meaningless EC. The flip question is, would I choose the candidiate with the committed EC over perhaps meaningless volunteer work? I am not so sure. Volunteer work, even if you don’t care about it, is still benefitting someone or something else.
Many people on this website, including me, have said you should only do things you have genuine interest in. But I make an exception for volunteer work. I think it’s important and valuable for reasons apart from college applications. Both my daughter and I used our volunteer jobs as references for getting other jobs. We are fortunate to live comfortable lives. I see no reason why my whole family shouldn’t volunteer doing soemthing. Not becasue we have plenty of spare time, but because it’s the right thing to do.
You only have so much time in any given week, month, year, and colleges know this. And the volunteer opportunities in a given area are relevant, as is the ability of a student, transportation-wise, to participate in those things. If you are otherwise active outside of school, it’s not a negative to not have time for community service. It always comes down to how you actually spend your time (i.e. what you do with it). I think a particular kind of community service can round out a particular application. But community service just for the sake of an application? It’s just time and filler—it’s something, but not much of it. But, as Lindagaf said, community service always helps round out a person in their life (exposure to different people, different experiences, different lifestyles, etc.). It’s always something important when you care about it.
As a volunteer myself, and a parent whose pups had several hundred hours of community service each, I can say it matters as to the type of people they became while in HS.
In our part of the country, teenage unemployment remains at or near the highest levels in several generations. So teens with time on their hands look for something to do.
Our high school’s National Honor Society requires x number of community service hours - some of the students cheerfully meet these, and others struggle to meet them. But the only students who get accepted into elite colleges from our high school are NHS members. Some of this may be a reflection of the NHS advisors - they are the same wonderful teachers who also happen to teach the AP level courses and have a reputation of writing the best rec letters. In other parts of the country NHS might not matter as much.
There are a lot of different kinds of CS projects - some are independent, individual activities (DD liked tutoring and helping teach elementary kids 1-1 learn how to read), and others are definitely group based (DS liked these more, opportunities to hang with some of his friends at the same time).
Thank you for all of your responses!