<p>im from england so over here universities put WAY less emphasis on like extra curricular stuff and society blah blah ( cos they know students for the most part don't actually care and just join a plethora of clubs to rack their tally up.)
One thing that is really irritating me on this forum ( i'm not being righteous or anything or taking any sort of moral high ground ) but when people say like " i can't believe i didnt get in i had this gpa, this sat score, this charity work. "
Being disappointed is fine and actually healthy for self improvement but the last one about charity work is just so wrong. Charity work is awesome and it's so impressive the amount of service american teens do, really i was amazed. I mean if you compare a student applying to oxbridge to ivy league students it's crazy the difference between what the ivy league applicants have done outside of their super grades. What I find hard to understand is why you think charity work is a pivotal factor in your application? I've had two brothers who have applied to america. ( one got into yale ) Charity work is great but is it fair to say colleges aren't looking for thousands of students who have all done some charity work that it doesn't seem they Really care about?
In sum, if you are putting down charity work as something you are upset that didn't help you attend your desired school then for me you don't deserve to go to that school or rather you just shouldn't have put down charity work in your application cos you clearly didn't care about it.. I am doing charity work at the moment and i don't even know whether I want to put it down on my application cos I am honestly not doing charity work to get into college. I volunteer every saturday cos I like it, I like the charity ( cambridge re-use check us out ).
At my school the director of foreign applications said " oh you should put that down as part of your application " and i thought to myself hmm do i really want to do that? it almost felt wrong. I do not volunteer for college i volunteer for the charity and myself. As my brother said in regards to applications " think about why not what.. "
so yeah even if i don't get in i will still work with cambridge re use. Maybe it's way more obvious to admissions officers what candidates care and don't care about and candidates elementary tactics at obfuscating this innate truth is probably easier to decipher than candidates think? </p>
<p>Would love to hear some objective responses?f</p>