<p>I have 200+ community service hours and I feel that's pretty reasonable. I've volunteered all over my community--in my local library, area summer camps, area summer programs, tutoring. It's probably bad that I didn't really show commitment to any one thing, I guess, but there's nothing I can really do about that now. </p>
<p>Anyway, I found a really cool volunteer opportunity at a pretty prestigious place. The catch is that it's not in my area, rather it's in a major city that I live in the suburbs of. </p>
<p>I think it would be really fun to volunteer here because it's a really nice place to be and explore, and also it's near where I might want to work in the future. The thing I'm worried about is, I don't want colleges to think I'm "abandoning" my own community and assume I'm some spoiled brat for volunteering at this well-off, prestigious place in this major city when I could be doing more down-to-earth type of community service activities in my own community. </p>
<p>Now, is my worry totally ridiculous, or would volunteering at this place definitely hurt me/make colleges assume negative things about me?</p>
<p>Colleges won’t care. The only thing that they may care about is that your reasons for volunteering in general seem to be padding your resume and now moving to an interesting city. However, truth is that most colleges don’t care whether or not students have done community service. There are colleges that do care about students’ ECs and community service, but they are ones like HPYS, who would be judging your service by its impact on you and the recipients, not how many hours you did or where you did those hours.</p>
<p>Ah…see this is the problem with college admissions nowadays. It’s preventing college seniors from doing things that they really want to do because of some absurd ideas about “perception” or how it will look on college applications.</p>
<p>Yes, this is ridiculous. If you like community service, DO IT! The whole point of community service is serving a community – it doesn’t have to be in your area, and if it’s the major city to your suburbs that’s good enough. I mean, there are kids who fly out to India or Thailand for a summer to have cool volunteer experiences there, and they’re still doing GOOD even if it’s not where they live.</p>
<p>I mean, if you were really concerned about this you could even write a really impressive supplemental application about cosmopolitanism and being a world citizen, considering the entire globe as your community and believing that doing good in one place will reverberate to others. But damn it, if it looks fun and you want to do it go ahead and do it, as long as it’s not illegal!</p>