If I start volunteering at food banks, or volunteering to help homeless people in Junior year will this appear as if I did it solely for college admissions? For the record I have done pretty much 0 volunteering prior.
What is your motivation for volunteering? Is it for college admissions? Does your school require volunteer hours? Is there some reason you became interested in this kind of service?
What do you mean by helping homeless people?
If it’s truly altruistic you wouldn’t care what it looked like to college admissions folks.
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You’re asking two separate questions. I’ll answer your title, which is that no, altruistic volunteering isn’t dead.
There’s no bad time to start volunteering. It never looks “bad.” Even if you did it only the day before an application was due, as long as you’ve actually done the volunteering, that’s a good thing. Whether or not admissions officers think you just did it for applications should be besides the point, right? They might think that, but what will they think if you do NO volunteering? There’s no definitive answer for that question. If you want to volunteer, do so.
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By definition altruistic behaviors are selfless in nature. If you are participating to bolster your applications than you are the one killing altruistic behaviors, if you volunteer solely to help others and don’t list it on your application that is altruistic.
I would suggest you choose something you feel passionate about (possibly what you are posting about) and then you can have the best of both worlds while your application will ring sincere.
Good luck.
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It’s also worth noting that there are many students who do no volunteering whatsoever and get into great colleges. Some kids just have zero time to volunteer. Others have jobs. Others don’t have any means to volunteer, and others have no interest.
Doing something, whether it’s volunteering or working or an after school club, is always going to look better on an application than nothing. And even reluctant volunteering still helps the community in some way.
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Hmm. Click-bait titling 
Do the volunteering if you truly enjoy volunteering. The true success can be found when you enjoy what you are doing.
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