Is it obnoxious to colleges such as Yale if I volunteer in 4 places. Do the Ivy’s look at this as I’m trying too hard ?
Are you volunteering to help people and your community, or to help yourself? The answer may lie there.
What is your motivation for your volunteering? Have you shown dedication and commitment, or do you just dabble in order to add something to your application?
Does it affect your transcript? If yes, then the answer to your question is YES. No ECs trump academics unless you’re a recruited athlete.
Thanks I chose to volunteer at a hospital and the NYPL because I’m passionate about both.
Racking up volunteer work is not the kind of EC that is very competitive at top colleges. They look for leadership and/or accomplishment. Anyone can sign up for a lot of clubs, activities, or volunteer work. As Cal Newport humorously puts it with one sample list of activities many kids think “looks great to adcoms”
The kids that stand out are the ones that do things like run a fundraiser for their volunteer group or start a group and get a number of their peers to start volunteering.
As a high school student, it’s good to try new things without necessarily making a major commitment (as long as you make time to commit to a small number of things). If you think your activities would look scattered on paper, don’t report all of them. It would be just as good to report a few where you’ve shown the most dedication and accomplishment.
Don’t live your life to improve your chances at a school that has a 6% acceptance rate and that can’t accept all f the qualified applicants. If volunteering is what you love doing, then do it and let your passion shine through. IMO the volunteering won’t get you into Yale nor will it keep you out.
Um…of course it won’t make you seem “obnoxious” unless it looks blatantly obvious that you’re doing it to get into college!
Some students wants to integrate service into everything they do/are passionate about, and I personally think that’s amazing! The thing with EC’s is that there’s no single EC that will magically get you into every college (okay, there’s a certain “level” you can attain that can be helpful, but just because you play a sport or volunteer or paint or play the flute doesn’t mean you’ll get into Harvard), but they help give you personality and depth. Because no one just wants robots who don’t do anything but study on campus!
If your volunteer activities have depth (meaning you have committed a decent amount of hours, I’d say >50 to be put on the app or you have a leadership role, both is even better), then you should be more than fine!! Things have gotten so crazy these days that now people have to question if people volunteer only for college or if they actually care…