Internship or Community Service?

<p>Hi..
I just have about a month to do either of the two..
which would look better on a college app?
If community service.. how many hrs etc?
if work ex.. what kind of a place?</p>

<p>To be honest, one month of anything isn’t going to make a huge difference. Admissions officers like to see students commit themselves to an activity (or activities) and be an active, contributing participant for a longer period of time.</p>

<p>That said, it’s good to get involved, no matter when you do it. Given the time frame, I would suggest community service in the form of a fundraiser or committing 20-40 hours per week to an already existing channel of service (i.e. soup kitchen, community clean-up, etc.). For a fundraiser, keep the goals realistic, it’s difficult to put anything big together in just 4 weeks.</p>

<p>alright… thanks for your advice…
so generally, how much time do high school students give to all this in a year.?. because i dont want it to adversely effect my academic performance…</p>

<p>I know for me, I averaged somewhere around 400 community service hours per academic year. People have more or less, but I enjoy helping people, so that’s where most of my free time went. It’s not the time that means as much as the overall dedication; I think someone who spends 200 hours doing random community service isn’t as impressive as someone who spends 100 hours with their favorite charity and makes an actual difference. But adcoms may disagree, so I’ll leave this to someone more knowledgeable.</p>

<p>Overall, no, I don’t think one month means anything but any help is appreciated by the people receiving it. Internships have the opportunity to prepare you for anywhere you may intern in the future. They’re both meaningless if you’re just doing them to pad your resume, though.</p>

<p>How about 2 hrs/week (not including summer so you can do something else to explore your other interests in the summer).</p>