<p>Hi everyone. I wanted to do some volunteer work over the summer since I had nothing else to do after August. Does anyone know any good animal shelters in Queens? I want to study medicine, but I do not really want to volunteer at a hospital. Is there anywhere else I can go? Also, how many hours do you need to volunteer to get into a decent college? Please help. Thanks:)</p>
<p>“Also, how many hours do you need to volunteer to get into a decent college?” Zero</p>
<p>Oh. So you only need to do volunteer hours for a scholarship? Im not going to college for a while yet so i have no idea what you need, but since it’s summer, i thought i could start early.</p>
<p>Just show a consistent volunteer base. Honestly you don’t even have to show that.</p>
<p>
No joke. It’s a widely held misconception that colleges care how many volunteer hours applicants have tallied in high school. They don’t.</p>
<p>Here’s what they care about, in decreasing order of importance.</p>
<ol>
<li> They want to know that you’re academically capable of doing the work. To judge this they look at your high school transcript (not just the GPA, but the classes you took and the grades you earned in them), your standardized test scores, and sometimes your teacher recommendations.</li>
</ol>
<p>Most colleges in the country aren’t very selective, and this is all they care about. (To be fair, however, most of those colleges and universities aren’t really of interest to the people who post on College Confidential.)</p>
<ol>
<li> They want to know what you’d contribute to campus life if you went there. To judge this, colleges ask about your extracurricular activities and accomplishments, your work/volunteer/military experience. The colleges that are selective enough that they can afford to care about this stuff want a campus where all kinds of people–jocks, artists, politicos, do-gooders, entrepreneurs, socialists, etc.–will mix, and where (one hopes) they’ll learn something from interacting with each other.</li>
</ol>
<p>So, if you’re applying to colleges selective enough that they care about your extracurricular activities, and if your shtick is that you’re a do-gooder, then your volunteer hours might be of some importance. But even then, it’s not the number of them that would matter, but rather what you did during all that time.</p>
<p>
Maybe for some scholarship that’s based on community service. But in general, not even for a scholarship.</p>
<p>
This advice really contradicts itself, doesn’t it? Only the second sentence here is true.</p>
<p>Oh. Ok then, that helps a lot. Thanks:)</p>