I’m not sure where you are getting your information from, but I’m not aware of Harvard or Yale sending their students around the world to help the homeless. Please point me to an article in the Harvard Crimson, The Yale Daily Herald, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, or any respected publication that says they do.
FWIW: At the undergraduate level, actually very few Harvard and Yale students study abroad – maybe 300 out of 6000 in any given year study abroad – and when they do, they STUDY, they don’t feed the homeless or help the poor – at least not as their main activity.
I agree, but the vast majority of high school students think the more community service hours they have on their resume, the better chances they will have for Admissions – and it doesn’t work that way. For example, both my kids had no community service on their resume – zero, zilch none. And that didn’t stop them from being admitted to HYP and a whole range of other top colleges.