I work as a math and programming tutor, and I have taught for a few hundred hours by now. I am applying to some prestigious schools, and I was given the suggestion to increase my volunteer hours, since all of the time I spent studying math and programming technically counts as preparation time for volunteering. I prepare for math and programming competitions, so I am quite experienced in those fields, and I’m told that all of the time spent learning the material in the past also counts towards volunteering, because that knowledge is being passed down to others when I tutor.
The person telling me to do this is not a college admissions officer so I’m questioning whether this is even true.
My opinion. The time you actually spend tutoring and preparing for the actual tutoring can count as volunteer hours. BUT your time studying for your own purposes is not volunteer hours. Presumably, you would need to be doing that studying anyway, right?
Just put the hours you actually volunteered, as it is better not to exaggerate. The actual hours are not what is important, though. What is important is how did the volunteering impact the recipients or the community, and how well can you articulate that?
I will give you an example that might make you understand. My kid volunteered to teach music lessons about 3 hours a week. He practiced his instrument at least 2 hours every day…played in a precollege orchestra and wind ensemble, took private music lessons, and played in a chamber music group. All of those things helped make him a better teacher but the more than 20 hours a week he spent on these other endeavors were NOT part of his three hours a week of volunteer time.
Whoever gave you that suggestion is ethically bankrupt. No, of course it shouldn’t count. Also, to be clear, you shouldn’t count any time tutoring when you were paid for it – only truly unpaid volunteer hours actually doing work with your students. Assuming the “few hundred hours” was all unpaid, that’s already plenty of volunteer time. Feel great about it and don’t worry. And definitely don’t take any future advice from whoever told you to count all your own studying and prep time – if you had added it it would have simply made your hours seem so over the top as to be suspect and it would have undermined the credibility of your legitimate volunteer time.
Yep. But the OP was specifically asking about what could count for volunteer hours. It’s not volunteering if it’s paid work. Work is a separate thing to report.
I understand what it means, my kids tutored in HS, both as unpaid peer tutors through NHS for volunteer hours, and as paid tutors (the HS will connect students with younger students who need paid tutors outside of school).
In which case, it should be clear to everyone that it’s unpaid, since some form of the word “volunteer” appears in the title and several times in the first post.
Well the question was asked about study hours being counted towards volunteering hours. When I read the first few words,
I work as a math and programming tutor, and I have taught for a few hundred hours by now.
I think this individual gets paid to tutor, plus does some tutoring for free. I honestly don’t know anyone who has tutored hundreds of hours for free, my kids definitely did more paid gigs than volunteer tutoring, but had other volunteer hours doing other things.
The answer for OP is if OP does voluntary tutoring for some organization, that is 1 activity and they can add up the hours. If OP also does paid tutoring, that is a separate activity with its own hours. As to preparatory time, any time OP does prep work (create lesson plans, problem sets, etc…) specifically for the volunteer or paid gig, that counts, as well as time correcting or commenting on student work. I would caution though that inflating hours can create a credibility problem in the OP’s apps. There are only so many hours in a week/day.