Hi, I founded a non-profit organization recently and I love to do it. My community has been very active in it and a few other organizations with similar missions has partnered with us and supported us. I feel that I am making a difference with this non-profit. However, I stumbled across some threads on here that states that starting a non-profit as a high-schooler looks bad, and I legitimately do not understand why. I plan to incorporate my passion for my non-profit into my essays as I think it one of the things that makes me unique. I wanted to ask for opinions on this. I will not just stop committing to my non-profit, but I was just curious on why a nonprofit might make a college applicant look bad. Thank you very much!
The problem is that hundreds, maybe thousands of high school seniors start non-profits to make their resumes appear stronger. Too many use it as a ploy, and it falls by the wayside once those acceptances roll in. So the whole enterprise doesn’t have the credibility it once did.
If it’s something you feel strongly about, if you’re actually helping people, then wonderful. Continue to do so and make a real difference in the world.
Just don’t count on it being a golden ticket to college.
Is your non-profit sustainable? Do you have someone prepared to take on the responsibility when you leave for college? If not, then it would appear to be more of a ploy, or a resume builder. What people say it doesn’t look good, it’s because little though has been put into sustainability for many organizations started by high schoolers.
@bjkmom and @CTScoutmom are both correct. Starting an non-profit for the purpose of assisting people long after you’ve left HS is great. The challenge is that many students want to do so to pad their resumes thinking that college admissions simply requires completing a checklist. Start a non-profit. Check. Publish a book. Check. Get 100K views on my YouTube channel. Check. Unfortunately, admissions does not work that way, and AOs will see right through the obvious ploys.
MIT actually says it really well:
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/highschool
The person who starts a non-profit will intrigue the AO not simply because s/he checked a box, but because of other factors related to it, some of which are intangible. The same, though, can be said for other ECs.
And it’s not necessarily the point of the essay.
You say there are similar non profits operating in your community. Working for the adults in one of those could have been impressive without a teen needing to own his own, go through the paperwork, use his time on that way.
No idea what your targets are, but go back and learn what does matter. You can put this on your app, but it’s not a hook.