Hi so this is for my brother. Basically he is a junior and has two options this summer. He could do a 8 week 40 hours a week research internship at a local university with a profesor. Or he could do a 2 week volunteering trip to a foreign country and get 400 volunteer hours. He cannot do both because of schedule issues. Which would be better? He wants to do engineering at Cornell, specifically biomedical or computer. Thank you for the help
AdComms view these cynically as ‘poverty tourism’ trips by kids w rich parents who can pay to pad their kid’s resume.
If your brother does do the trip and chooses to write about it, then I suggest he focuses on the cultural broadening aspect on it, and less on the volunteering aspect of it. Like he really needed to fly to Costa Rica to do community service, because interesting enough poor people don’t exist in the United States.
Research is valued more. Volunteer at home.
I’d say to advise him to go for the research internship, for the reasons given in the previous posts.
Agree with posts above. He can volunteer locally but likely won’t have the chance to do research full time as a HS student.
And the trip sounds a bit fishy – to get 400 volunteering hours in 2 weeks one would need to volunteer 28 hours/day! My guess it the trip would give him closer to 40 hours of volunteering.