<p>With the students I know who took these trips, there was no “assuming” necessary. The parents came right out and told us. The private college counselor one mother hired advised her that a stint volunteering in a third world country, well documented with video, was a sure way to get her son to leapfrog applicants with similar stats who volunteered with charities close to home. It worked.</p>
<p>I imagine that even if the original intent is to add to a college application, the time and experience of living with people in an unfamiliar environment will go much further and deeper than adding a few pithy paragraphs to an essay.</p>
<p>emrealdkty4 is correct! We were very fortunate that my parents could afford to take me and my three children to South Africa. I went once with my two sons, then once with my daughter when she was old enough. It really WAS an invaluable experience. There’s no replacing a tour of a township where 1 1/2 million people live in tiny block houses or shacks made from cardboard and metal signs. My kids had no idea so many people live like that.</p>
<p>My niece, in 8th grade, is finishing up her Girl Scout Bronze Award project. The Austin, Texas school district donated about $750,000 worth of old textbooks to be shipped to a school in Ethiopia. My niece had to raise $38,000 to pay for the shipping! I think it’s just astounding what kids are doing these days. There’s a lot more involved than doing it to write college essays.</p>
<p>One of many articles on the subject:</p>
<p>[Campus</a> Overload - Admissions officers not impressed by pricey service trips](<a href=“http://voices.washingtonpost.com/campus-overload/2010/10/pricey_service_trips.html]Campus”>http://voices.washingtonpost.com/campus-overload/2010/10/pricey_service_trips.html)</p>
<p>The upshot?
“What admissions officers value most in the application process is “passion and consistency,” according to a DoSomething.org 2008 survey. And 100 percent of admissions officers said they would value four years volunteering at a local community center more than one month spent “helping orphans in Somalia.” But what matters most, the survey found, is how you tell your story.”</p>
<p>I’ve both read these apps and a friend of my girls did one. My girls’ reactions to her photos: why is X standing there in a bikini? Wow, look at that hotel! That pool is huge. Wow, she’s sitting on an elephant. </p>
<p>Kudos to MaineL’s niece.</p>
<p>OP, what may have served your friend is the sum total of the professional counselor’s work on the app. Plus, whatever the kid’s strengths were otherwise. Where I read, let me assure you these onesie trips, in themselves, don’t leapfrog anyone. You need to show some consistency in your compassion and commitment. I’d guess the highly paid counselor covered that, too. </p>
<p>I’m not putting down the experience of helping others in dire need. But, I am leery of expensive trips. A pattern of helping others (the real roll-up your sleeves stuff, not the occasional fun thing with friends,) can show a kid has perspective, maturity and a willingness to commit, over time, to others’ needs, not just his own interests. When a kid applies with the usual hs activities and just this one, expensive service experience, it begs the question: why not something, anything, that serves the needy in the local community or somewhere in the US? Does he not see the need around him? That can be a problem.</p>
<p>so… the question becomes how to reconcile the consensus here (that these trips are bull) with what universities love to advertise in their brochures/websites (almost always white kids surrounded by african children while they–the white student–are somewhere ‘exotic’ doing ‘missionary-like’ stuff)? seems like a contradiction. either it’s valued (and valuable), or it isn’t.</p>
<p>I think the difference is, in the USA, there are many opportunities, but also many charities already working to help.
Rather than speaking to resentment in some domestic areas, of “do-gooders”, that they perceive as being much higher on the socio-economic ladder than those they are trying to help, even if that isn’t true, I want to share an anecdote.</p>
<p>My youngest attended an inner city high school that had an global computing program.
Students spent the year collecting, repairing and refurbishing computers to take to developing countries. Once there, they installed them in a village hub, usually a school, and trained students and adults to maintain & use them.</p>
<p>The very first trip, they chose to install computers in an orphanage in a village in Mexico. Children were cared for at the orphanage until they were 11 or 12 yrs old. Then they were expected to know how to make their way in the world. If they were lucky, they might be chosen for an apprentice by a honorable patr</p>
<p>yes, it CAN be life-changing! which is what makes it all the more frustrating (to me) when people do it simply to pad a resume/enhance a college application (or make their school look ‘special’ in a brochure). in many ways, i think it can be more life-altering for a poor child to visit a country where people have it even worse because then they can gain a better perspective on their own struggle with poverty (and, perhaps, start to see their own sunrise). but poor kids rarely get that opportunity.</p>
<p>btw, never heard of zits. lol</p>
<p>Both my kids took a year off before college to volunteer.
My oldest participated with CityYear, a domestic organization, that doesn’t cost money, it actually pays you a living stipend for your year of service & you earn education credits to be put toward tuition or loans.
Youngest worked two retail jobs for six months to pay her way to volunteer in India for almost as long.
It was very inexpensive to live where & the way she did in India. The bulk of her money went for airfare.
Our family isn’t poor, but not wealthy enough to bankroll expensive vacations either.
( they didn’t do it for college applications, but they were each accepted to all the colleges they applied)
I also could not exaggerate how proud of them I am.</p>
<p>never heard of zits cartoon? Oh my, how did you survive teen parenting? Did you also have to blaze the path of parenthood without the “For Better or Worse” and “Baby Blues” cartoons strips?</p>
<p>I am skeptical about this whole “form your own nonprofit to help people in a third world country” thing. It’s great when young people want to get involved. It’s great when they spend their money to help others, no matter what the motivation. It can’t hurt for them to see abject poverty in other countries.</p>
<p>However, there are nonprofits already at work in those countries, with people who already have structures in place to help – structures that may have taken years of forming relationships with local people to put in place, and structures that may have taken trial and error to develop. They have found out what people need and what ways work best to help them. Many of these nonprofits are literally begging for money and sometimes volunteers, so that they can extend what they’re doing to help more people. They are helping formerly prostituted girls and women get away from that abusive life. They are working with individual villages to help educate children so that they might have a better future. High school students: Do research, find a group already in existence, and find out how they need help – not just how you want to help. Hold a fundraiser once or twice a year for that group. Visit if you can, but only if your presence is actually helpful, not just a photo-op.</p>
<p>So, why form a new nonprofit when there are so many that desperately need help? Sometimes it’s just plain resume-building – the idea that universities are looking for leaders, people who do new things, not just (perish the thought) followers. I’ve told my children that most of the time people are needed just to do the everyday, non-glorified scut work. Personally, if I were on the admissions committee of a college, I would look more favorably at an applicant who had done that scut work throughout high school than at one who formed his/her own nonprofit during the previous year.</p>
<p>Some people don’t form the non profits until they are out of college. 
[Carbon</a> Roots International Carbon Roots International’s official website](<a href=“http://www.carbonrootsinternational.org/]Carbon”>http://www.carbonrootsinternational.org/)</p>
<p>Or they started @ 11 yrs old.
<a href=“http://www.richardsrwanda.org/[/url]”>http://www.richardsrwanda.org/</a></p>
<p>emeraldkity4–the projects your kids were involved in sound fantastic. It also sounds like a passion that your family shares. I don’t think anyone has a single judgemental thought about it when these activities are done in this manner, from the heart.</p>
<p>It is the intentional, “Oh, Wow, how can I dazzle the admissions officers and assure my place at School X?” padding of the resume attitude that is at issue.</p>
<p>I agree that some kids start out thinking or their parents start thinking that they need something else on their resume.</p>
<p>That very well may be true, and if they are an average upper middle family, it is possible that the children have never undergone more than slight discomfort and building homes for a summer in NOLA, or working with minis group " friendly waters For the world", will give them a broader perspective. Which might get them a scholarship or a bump into a school or not- it also might enable them to get more out of college.</p>
<p>It’s also possible that they viewed it as no more than a scary ride at Disneyland, I think it might be hardto predict.</p>
<p>I didn’t care about my kids intentions when they took out the garbage or washed the dishes, I cared about the results.
Perhaps for some teens, community services is the same way.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that having my kid carry out the garbage is the same as if I were to spend thousands of dollars on a volunteer trip to pad a resume to get into a specific college, but ok.</p>