"For most people, getting a college education is a compelling goal. And rightly so. Few things deliver more lifelong benefits than a college degree.
But getting into college, especially a top college, is increasingly competitive. Not even great grades and strong assessment scores are guarantees of acceptance. Fortunately, a new survey of college admissions officers and staff shows that targeted community service may be a shortcut to scoring college admission or serve as a powerful tie-breaker among competitive applicants." …
While DD17 was shooting for top schools, and had a lot of community services. DS20 doesn’t have the drive or consistency or hard work to do so. He is going for state schools. We thought he doesn’t need community services. He has paid jobs. Are we wrong??
Stories like this have been the source of a number of arguments between me and my husband. He thinks kiddo doesn’t do enough community service, and will occasionally sign us up for a random park cleanup or homeless shelter dinner to get hours in. I believe that admissions officers are smart enough to see through community service for the purpose of resume building and they don’t think very highly of it. Am I wrong?
I believe that a kid who has a clear passion, puts in a number of hours at one specific activity, and has great letters of recommendation and talks about it in their essay is a strong candidate. But I think if you have a kid who puts effort into different extracurricular activities and excels in them then draggin them unwillingly to random afternoons mucking around in stream beds is actually going to detract from their application.
Neither of my kids had significant community service. Other than not getting much in the way of $100 awards at Senior Awards Night, it didn’t seem to hurt them (Yale and Swarthmore were where they ended up). If it’s of interest to a kid, I’m all for it, but if they have other intense interests, they should do that.
@ninakatarina - Many high schools require students to complete a certain number of community service hours in order to graduate, which it seems your husband believes is a good thing for both students and their communities. If those students apply to colleges that primarily care about student GPA and testing stats, then their applications will be competitive with those of similar students. Of course there are high schools students who must work or help with family daycare, and that is viewed by AOs as equally - or even more important - than those compelled community service activities. In colleges/universities where admissions criteria are “holistic,” then the question for AOs will always be how committed - for how many years and for what amount of time - an applicant has been to any academic, extracurricular, community service, etc., activity. So I agree with your statement “that a kid who has a clear passion, puts in a number of hours at one specific activity, and has great letters of recommendation and talks about it in their essay is a strong candidate.”
I’m not proposing the idea that colleges don’t value community service, but this article and “study” are not remotely independent or based on actual data. The “study” was created and paid for by a company that is trying to sell a product - a database that tracks and verifies a student’s community service. Clearly a company that is trying to sell a service to verify students’ volunteer hours has a vested interest in the results. Also, although the article notes that 264 “admissions leaders” were surveyed, there is no indication that this is a representative sample… these could be clients of the company that paid for the survey or random people who work in the admissions office of the colleges ranked #2500 - #3000 in USNWR.
It’s disappointing that Forbes would print as news what is basically an advertisement for a fee based service that is hoping to generate more clients.
I am going with the philosophy that kid shouldn’t have zero hours, but probably doesn’t 5,000 hours. Somewhere in the middle shows you are willing to help others out once in a while and aren’t a completely self obsessed spoiled brat.
I think having random activities that are mandated is silly and looks terrible on an application. I find the service trips that some high income kids take to be often laughable. Someone told me yesterday about a service trip to Fiji. The only thing which has meaning is if a kid can demonstrate long term and active commitment to something. It is particularly good if a kid can demonstrate they did something meaningful to them in which they have a genuine interest. Colleges should be looking for the next generation adult who is going to volunteer in some meaningful way, rather than someone who shows up a soup kitchen once and talks about it.
Deep impact is better than many hours.
@Dave_Berry
What value do these admissions offices place on paid work? Even kids from wealthier families need income to help Mom and Dad pay for the extras that tuition won’t cover.
My daughter had quite a number of hours with Girl Scouts but since her letter of recommendation was a teacher that didn’t really know anything about what she did outside of school I doubt it was mentioned. She put it in her brag sheet that the school had her fill out but again the counselors or the teachers are not going to be able to talk in a meaningful way about what she did the way her Girl Scout leader would have been able to.
The problem with all of these indicators is that they loose all meaning as soon as they are widely known. When the public became aware that schools wanted leadership, suddenly everyone was president of some club. When it came out that schools preferred “specialists” to well rounded kids, everyone stopped dabbling and found a way to “show a passion” for one specific activity. Now, the emphasis seems to be on community involvement. I have heard it from a few admissions counselors in addition to this study. The problem is that once that becomes the gateway to admission, it will no longer signal what the schools want to measure. It won’t be an indicator of a student’s core values or likelihood of contributing to the campus community. It will only be an indication that students are robotically performing the tasks necessary to gain admission. The students with a true passion and commitment will be lost in the crowd. As soon as colleges become aware of the switch, they will change the goal posts again.
Reading the article again, I get a nasty taste in my mouth. A survey commissioned by people who make money from tracking student service hours finds out that admissions officers think that student service hours are valuable?
In other news, a survey commissioned by the tobacco industry found out that smoking makes you look cool and a survey commissioned by the booze industry found that drinking makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.