Impress Princeton Admissions - Help with Hurricane Sandy

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>Here’s a big hint on how to truly look good to college admissions:</p>

<p>Hurricane Sandy was punishing last night, and will continue to hit other parts of the country.</p>

<p>High school students can help – now.</p>

<p>People who post on here are thinking about colleges to an unhealthy degree. They are practicing the SAT over and over, and developing strategies to help them build impressive resumes to impress college admissions officers.</p>

<p>The hurricane victims need help. If you live in range and can help, it’s time to stop worrying about math teams, the tiddlywinks club you started and your SAT cram course. Spend your time beyond schoolwork on something truly important.</p>

<p>A year ago, I was a hurricane victim, right here in the USA. We experienced the worst flood in 120 years a year ago. Houses were washed away, and the power lines, bridges and roads disappeared. Numerous other homes were damaged. The damage was spotty - there would be a 2-mile disaster area, and then a 5-mile stretch that was undamaged. The community got together admirably - those who had power and could cook cooked for those who couldn't, and everyone in the affected areas pitched in for repairs. However, I don't remember a single high school kid who came from one of the untouched areas, a few miles down the road, to help out.</p>

<p>A year later, I'm still repairing flood damage to my land, and many of my neighbors are worse off.</p>

<p>I'd love to interview an applicant (I interview for Princeton) who told me that during a flood, hurricane or other disaster that they spent every spare minute helping homeowners shovel mud from their basement, or better, got together 20 kids from the school to do stuff like this.</p>

<p>It would also be great to meet one who told me that he regularly shoveled the sidewalk of the little old lady who lives next next door for free (one of my friends in high school used to do that), or stopped the kids at school from picking on the kid with cerebral palsy. </p>

<p>Doing these things may not be as glamorous as helping to build a medical clinic in Guatemala, but they are far more important. The expertise a high school kid brings to Guatemala isn’t much – they would be better off with a donation of the money spent on plane fare. </p>

<p>A heartfelt essay showing that a kid did something like this that demonstrates that he or she is truly caring and helpful, along with, perhaps, a letter from a teacher who witnessed the actions or from the old lady that was helped, might just make an applicant rise above one of the other kids who has built one of those "resumes" filled with formula activities that we see on all of these chances threads.</p>

<p>Which kid would you rather have get into Harvard or Princeton? And down the road, if you were choosing your doctor or your lawyer or your next employee or your boss, would you rather have it be the kid who built the resume, or the one who went out of his way to help people while in high school? </p>

<p>Admissions can absolutely recognize someone with a crafted-to-look-great-to-admissions resume. What they look for is demonstrated excellence and passion, and this is one way passion can be demonstrated. </p>

<p>Please help the hurricane victims. If you can’t, help your neighbors. Do it because you care. It will pay off in the long run.</p>

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<p>*** did I just read?</p>

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<p>Apologies, EarthPig, but while I wholeheartedly support your effort to garner assistance for victims of the recent hurricane/storm, I really have to say that I am rather put off by the way in which you’re trying to incentivize present/potential applicants into providing said assistance.</p>

<p>Yes, proactively aiding those within one’s community who are perhaps unable to aid themselves in light of such natural disasters is an undeniably worthy cause - one that supercedes (in regards to contributions towards personal merit) “pracicing the SAT over and over” and/or “developing strategies to help them build impressive resumes to impress college admissions officers” and that will ultimately be more rewarding than either of the above tasks. No one can argue that amongst the exaggeration and general duplicity pervading today’s college admissions processes (especially those pertaining to the most desired schools), helping others without expecting a recordable boost to one’s college resume is a wonderfully uncommon thing for anyone to do. Such an act directly helps one’s immediate community, and because it helps the most immediate community it is likely to have much greater impact than a similar effort applied to, say, Guatemala (whereupon the individual, as you say, might do more to help by simply donating the money that would’ve been spent on his or her airline ticket). In addition, as you stated, a heartfelt essay on such an admirable effort would most definitely be more appealing to any admissions officer at any institution.</p>

<p>My problem with this thread is: you’re trying (advertently or not), by more or less telling us that going out there and helping those affected by the storm - and later capitalizing on what was originally meant to be selfless and unrequited aid - to prompt students to altruism in a manner that altogether defeats the purpose of altruism in the first place. Your post (as I’m interpreting it) is contradictory in that it tells us to stop worrying about creating impressive admissions profiles, then immediately proposes another way by which to make our admissions profiles more impressive.</p>

<p>Views may differ on the topic of disaster-relief and general aid, but I believe that aid should be voluntary on the part of the sovereign citizen. The government, FEMA, local departments, etc. have legal obligations to provide aid in the event of a disaster, but the individual’s thoughts, desires, and actions should be the sole indicator of that individual’s societal worth (the same worth colleges presumably aspire to measure). In this case, the proper course of action should be to hold back and let those who would’ve helped either way do just that, and, if the opportunity should surface during a college interview/essay writing process, reflect on that pure, selfless endeavor. In other words, let those truly feel the desire to help help, and admissions should, as you say, recognize the “demonstrated excellence and passion” on their part. Don’t entice people with the idea that if they go out to help now (with altruism, or boosted college admissions prestige in mind, or some combination thereof in mind) they will be rewarded with a better shot at getting into Princeton or any other school. </p>

<p>Don’t make the sincere effort towards helping others - one of the last bastions of authenticity within the realm of college admissions left in this world - into just another generic item to be listed on a college application, like a 2300+ SAT score or a leadership position in a school club. </p>

<p>There will always be enough people to help those in need of assistance - we still have that privilege in this country (speaking from the experience of having been born and lived in another, less wholesome nation). </p>

<p>And don’t get me wrong; I - again, wholeheartedly - support your endeavor to get more people out there helping the victims of Hurricane Sandy (I hope to think I understand the considerable extent of damage caused within the past few days). I also wish the best towards your own recovery efforts and hope you understand that this is meant neither to be anti-aid nor insensitive in any way.</p>

<p>With that being said, however, I must conclude that I really couldn’t be more disillusioned by your trying to do so via such a bad incentive (ie. that of bolstering one’s college application/interview). Selfless aid is something that a person has to come up with his/her own motivation for - please don’t end that notion.</p>

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<p>True dedication and passion to the wellbeing of others means not seeking any acknowledgment for it. Yes, that includes in the college admissions process.</p>

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<p>I agree with EarthPig wholeheartedly.</p>

<p>Do it because you care, but if you’ve actually done significant (by which I don’t mean sandbag for a few hours or, even better, stage a fake photo shoot for unwarranted cans), I surely think you should list it on your application.</p>

<p>It’s a place for you to sell yourself and this whole ‘oh it corrupts the act of doing good’ doesn’t set well with me, at all.</p>

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<p>@Challenged:</p>

<p>It’s the incentive that prompts the action, not necessarily the action itself, that is ultimately more important; an act is - in the grand scheme of things - physical and temporary, but a cause is immortal.</p>

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<p>I disagree.</p>

<p>Action, at the end of the day, is what makes the world move. Also, I don’t think EarthPig is saying do it for the wrong reasons, all I’m saying is there is nothing ‘honorable’ about doing something and not putting it on your application.</p>

<p>There is something to be said about doing something and claiming no credit, except on a college application sort of process in which claiming credit (where it is rightfully yours) is the name of the game.</p>

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<p>Ok … I’ll agree to that, but the fact that they’re thinking about college admissions as a motivation for doing something is an issue. Even the title is problematic: “Impress Princeton Admissions - Help with Hurricane Sandy.”</p>

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<p>@Challenged:</p>

<p>I think you misunderstood my point. I’m not saying that action in and of itself is unimportant by any means; it is indeed, as you say, the main driving force behind continued existence as we know it. But action can only result from one thing - motivation (ie. incentive, more or less). And when that incentive is anything but ideal - or as close to ideal as is humanly possible - the resultant action, whatever it may be, will inevitably decay in purpose and thereby efficacy until such a day that it, having been robbed of what can be called its original intent, no longer “makes the world turn.” Such a destiny might be far in the future, but it can for all intents and purposes be considered feasible.</p>

<p>And of course he isn’t telling us to “do it” for patently wrong reasons, he is saying to do it for societal good but to do so with such a corrupt reward as impressing college admissions officers in mind, therefore making the incentive for doing good in the first place, bad (ie. prone to the aforementioned decay).</p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that the title of this thread, coupled with his post, urge us not to claim credit where credit is due but to do something with no other intent than to earn that credit to claim.</p>