I volunteer at the library by stocking books, working in the heritegae room and gift shop, etc. for 3 hours a week.
for what caliber school? Dartmouth? Idaho State?
Not necessarily. It depends how it related to your other ECs, and on what you want to do eventually. BTW, libraries are one of the true underpinnings of the social and intellectual fabric of American society. It’s really great that you volunteer there!
It is as good as anything – especially if you can expand upon why you chose the library to volunteer in (ex. your love of books etc). For top tier schools an applicant typically has more than one EC.
My dream school is Wharton/Yale. It’s just that I feel that a lot of people on CC are going to Africa or going to the food bank for 10 hours/ week moving boxes and stuff whereas I’m not really doing anything.
I have a ton of leadership positions ready for application season, but my volunteer record seems weak compared to going to Africa and stuff.
One of the schoolyard myths about college admissions is “need volunteer work, gotta show you give back.”
At the most selective colleges they are looking for depth more than just participation. Nor is there any requirement for volunteer work; plenty of kids report here they got in w/o any. Stanford, for example, says
If you already have a ton of leadership positions, those are your ECs! Don’t waste time on volunteer stuff in order to boost your chances of admission somewhere; spend it on volunteer efforts you want in order to help out, because its what you feel like doing. Or, if you don’t so feel, then don’t.
Colleges aren’t looking to see that you ticked all of the “EC” boxes. Nice that you have some volunteer activity, but I would not sweat the quality of that particular “box”. However… Yale in particular is looking for some kind of “spark” in your ECs. Something unusual that stands out from the crowd. Volunteering in Africa means nothing except maybe that your parents could pay for you to go on a program to do that, and Yale knows it. You might read “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport, he has some interesting thoughts on how to leverage your interests into ECs that top colleges might find appealing.
Better to list that than nothing.
@mikemac
I think that is the only time I’ve seen Idaho State mentioned on CC so far! A lot of my friends are going there…
Is it bad that I’ll list all 10 boxes by then? They’re all EC’s I spend at least 2 hours/ week on, but some such as volunteering seem weak since I’m not really doing anything
Here is the way we thought about it:
- Activities that fit in with their proposed major stayed on the list no matter what.
- Activities they did all four years stayed on the list no matter what.
- Activities where they had some kinds of awards or high finishes or something to brag about stayed on the list.
- Activities that fit the “picture” the kid wanted to paint for admissions stayed on the list.
Things that came off the list:
- Things they only did in 9th and/or 10th grade that didn’t fit one of the categories above
Don’t worry about whether you are over or under the 10 boxes. If you have some related activities (say you had a lot of music activities). You could have an activity called “Music” and say “See additional information” in the teeny tiny description box they give you. Then in the additional information section, have a heading for “Activity - Music” and list out the specific activities, accolades, etc related to music.
One of my kids still had more than 10 items. She put a section in additional information called “Additional Activities”, and bulleted them out there. She did put the least important ones in that section, though. And she gave a lot of thought to how to order the ones in the boxes so the most important were first.
Thanks! That makes a lot of sense
Note on the common app it can be kind of hard to get the formatting of a list right. Tip I heard out here was to type it in a plain text editor (not Word) and cut/paste. Be sure to print out the Common App and review it in printed format before submitting to make sure it look okay (good proofreading plan anyway!).