Today's "Zits" Comic -- Digging Wells in 3rd World Countries

<p>Did anybody else find himself/herself nodding while reading "Zits" today? How far behind an underclassman is if he hasn't already dug a well in a foreign country, or started a nonprofit to benefit someone in a third world area?</p>

<p>I know a few kids whose parents arranged elaborate, and very expensive, jaunts to Africa and other far-flung places, mainly to have something dramatic to list on the college resume. Some are using college placement counselors to devise these trips. It works, too; the kids I know all got in to Ivy League and other top schools. One woman who bank-rolled her son's super costly summer trip to volunteer in an African clinic (kid has NO interest in going into medicine, by the way; he just needed something sexy on his applications) told me she is sure that's why he go into Yale.</p>

<p>Don't college admissions officers see through this stuff?</p>

<p>Most do…</p>

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Apparently not.</p>

<p>I seriously doubt that was a major factor in those stories.</p>

<p>Kids aren’t getting into Yale solely because they’ve spent time in a clinic in Africa. It’s naive to think so.</p>

<p>No, not “solely.” But doing something so dramatic may very well have been the thing that put him over the top.</p>

<p>the fact that the family can afford these designer trips and the college “image” consultant probably has more to do with their admission than the trip itself. Just my opinion, based purely on conjecture.</p>

<p>My thought seeing the comics this morning was that the costly, 3rd world volunteering trend is more widespread than I’d realized. It’s not just my son’s school that has parents scrambling to arrange a foreign trip to dig wells, while the local Boys & Girls Club, food bank, etc. constantly need volunteers.</p>

<p>[Zits</a> ArcaMax Publishing](<a href=“Zits | Comics | ArcaMax Publishing”>Zits | Comics | ArcaMax Publishing) I love Zits. I think colleges just want to see that kids are doing SOMETHING and that the students can articulate what it meant to them.</p>

<p>Perhaps these trips do make a difference, in that the colleges know that if the student can afford such resume builders, they will not require financial aid. This may help to weed through the financial status of students, long before the FAFSA is completed.</p>

<p>Although the trip itself might not make much difference, it does give the student an interesting topic for essays. (And hopefully also an interesting topic to ponder all throught life too. My church friends that have visited our partner church in Zambia are forever changed.)</p>

<p>Grandparents and overseas service projects are the bread and butter topics for college essays. At one school we visited the admissions team said the best essay they had read in recent years was about a paperclip.</p>

<p>^Yup. Most trite topics:
“How I traveled halfway around the world and discovered that poor people are just like us”
“Winning the big game”
“My grandpa, my hero” alt. version, “The lessons I learned from my dying _____”</p>

<p>Lots of the kids who do the 11k 10 day trips to Africa have very little of substance that they do in their home communities. In those cases, believe me, adcoms at top colleges see it for what it is: “pay to play.” Even when the kid writes an essay about a trip like this, it rarely helps if that’s all he’s got that takes him out of his comfort zone. There’s just too much competition from kids with better substance. Unless he’s also the bassoonist with geographical diversity and an underfilled major.</p>

<p>ps. Sue hit it. Again. “I got to hold orphan babies.”</p>

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<p>As if the boarding school and the Park Avenue address didn’t give it away first.</p>

<p>Perhaps there is some benefit to witnessing real poverty that doesn’t involve college applications.</p>

<p>glido, I do agree with that. I am also a big believer in intent. If the intent of one of these trips is truly an area of passion of the student, then yes of course, it is legitimate and worthy. The padding of the extracurriculars to dazzle, is not an acceptable intent.</p>

<p>I think building bridges with people in other cultures is invaluable. Americans are far from the only people in the world, and there are many realities.
You don’t need to go 2000 miles to share experiences with someone with a different background, but if that is what a young person chooses to do, more power to them.
I think it is very cynical to assume that it is about getting into college.</p>

<p>I do agree that not needing financial aid, yet having comparable stats as other applicants to top schools can be a “tip”.</p>

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<p>No doubt. But I believe that this cartoon was referring to those students who are planning these experiences as resume builders. As someone before stated, it’s all about intent, which would hopefully be evident through the rest of the student’s application.</p>