<p>How important is it to track Volunteer Hours? I see many kids on this site list their hours of service.</p>
<p>I have a 10th grader who does a fair amount of voulnteer work, but doesn't track hours. His work is spread out over school community service projects, scattered church projects, and an outside school EC. For the o/s school EC he has to have certification and pass set OSHA tests as well.</p>
<p>The kid will never agree to actual counting of his hours or to having "sign-offs" unless it is absolutely required. He doesn't subscribe to the "packaging" or resume building mentality.</p>
<p>Doubtful he will shoot for an Ivy school. Probably will apply to top 50 LACs and public honors colleges. He'll need merit/FA combo for most schools. For arguments sake, he wouldn't apply to schools which he isn't in at least the 50% stat GPA/test scores. </p>
<p>So, based on all above, will most colleges just "see" the volunteer stuff due to the activites/ECs he'll list and positions within the ECs? Or, should I push the issue (which will cause a verbal argument for sure) and help him track hours? And if tracking is necessary, does the training hours get counted (ie CPR/EMT type training)?</p>
<p>Well, he really should track them. Some of D1’s applications ask for quantification. Or you can just start a list on paper, and hand it over to him to tally when he is doing his apps.</p>
<p>Many private schools have “requirements” of a certain number of hours each year, and that helps the kids keep their tallies.</p>
<p>You can tell him that you completely agree (if you do) that he should not do things like volunteer in order to package himself for college. BUT, if he keeps track of the details now, he will find it very easy to put together his applications when the time comes because they want that information. And most of the kids he will be competing against for admission will be keeping track.</p>
<p>I do keep a Word doc with each D’s accomplishments. It is easy to forget the small stuff. For example, D2 came home yesterday and announced that she is having a poem published in a magazine. I had no idea she had even submitted anything. By 2 years from now we might have forgotten. And in the end she might decide she doesn’t want to include it in her accomplishments. But if she goes on to have more items published, or decides to apply as a “humanities” major to a prestigious college that leans more to science and is looking to beef up their humanities reputation, she may want all the humanities related activities that we can remember. And who can recall which year she earned a ribbon for her bug collection at the fair vs. her bluebird trail without writing it down? I can’t, and she probably can’t either. So I maintain a list.</p>
<p>The list can also be valuable when they are brainstorming for ideas about essay topics. Sometimes looking at the list triggers a memory of an event related to a specific tournament or volunteer experience. D1 definitely found it valuable for that purpose.</p>
<p>I think hours are important to gauge level of commitment.
Its great if someone is interested in community work and spends a lot of time doing different things- packing bags at a food bank here, trimming shrubs for an elderly couple there.</p>
<p>He may want to address this topic in an essay ( or not) and often schools like an outside recommendation- an adult from a volunteer position ( or paid work), is a good resource for that.</p>
<p>My kids did different volunteer projects as well- but mostly one main interest over the years. My oldest for example accumulated 2000 volunteer hours( from her position at the zoo) by the time she graduated from high school .
She didn’t do this with college in mind, she did it because of her own interest- and ironically, I think that is what colleges were looking for.
;)</p>
<p>My kids have only been involved in a few things, so on the application where they ask how many weeks of the year involved, and # hours per week, it was not hard to come up with a reasonable estimate. If you have many different projects, by all means write them down. If he won’t, I would probably keep track for him. I would certainly count training hours.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids counted hours while they were doing them, but they did estimate the hours when filling out the Common Application. Since they both did most of their volunteering in the summer it wasn’t too hard to figure out after the fact. Neither of them needed documentation since they weren’t interested in joining the school NHS. My younger son wrote his EC essay about one of his volunteer jobs, and my older son mentioned some of what he did in passing in an essay. My kids didn’t have a lot of volunteer hours by CC standards. If their volunteer activities helped them, it was what they did, not how many hours they spent doing it.</p>
<p>He definitly only does the stuff he wants to do. My fear is if we don’t track it then 1. as intparent said, we’ll forget. 2. The adults in leadership of his 2 most time consuming ECs may change and then he’ll be left with no one to write a rec that would highlight his large commitment (assuming he doesn’t track it).</p>
<p>If I can’t convince him, I’ll at least keep a track list of the things I know. </p>
<p>Any thoughts on how to treat training hours? He does search and rescue. To be “on-call” he must have certain levels of training. I assume the training would not be counted, but a co-worker is a volunteer firefighter and considers his hours of training part of his “volunteer” activities – albeit this guy isn’t doing it for anything official, just lumps all his firefighter stuff in one “pile” of his life.</p>
<p>And yes, I am in over analyzier mode today.</p>
<p>We started tracking them in a spreadsheet starting with the summer before freshman year. We live in a town of 70,000 with lots of local scholarships and almost all of them ask for volunteer hours. Same is true for our National Honor Society application and to an extent National Merit application to move from semifinalist to finalist. With more colleges stressing service learning, more are asking about this in applckiations.</p>
<p>So, it was worth it just to add the hours as we went along–food kitchen day here, highway cleanup there, etc. It added up.</p>
<p>Our high school now requires 10 hours of community service to graduate. Kind of a joke–10 hours in 4 years, but it’s a start.</p>
<p>I think it is great that he is doing this just for the sake of doing it. He must be a great kid. I commend him for not bothering to track his hours as that says to me that he is doing it because he is just a good person. Unfortunately, many schools may want a quantitative list of his hours and it might just be that little thing that gets him in somewhere he decides he really wants to go. I would try to keep a loose list of his volunteer hours. Just keep a notebook that he can scribble it down in as he goes. It doesn’t have to be perfect but when the time comes, at least it will give you an idea. It is not a bad idea to keep track of things as they happen; as intparent noted, it so easy to forget when kids are filling out apps. Getting into schools has gotten so competitive that every little thing helps. </p>
<p>More than getting in, there are a lot of scholarships that are awarded based on community service, and they usually want documentation. If he is relying on financial aid, I would say that is a pretty good incentive to keep track of hours. Good luck and congratulations on having a great kid!</p>
<p>I definitely think the training hours count. </p>
<p>With my first kid we were in for a shock when he went to fill out apps and we found some wanted total hours of his activities, some average hours per week, and some asked for exact dates. It was a pain going back and reconstructing dates on some of his activities. With Kid2, I keep the Mom Log. Starting his freshman year I made a file that any certficates, letters, etc go into. I keep track of the dates he starts and stops activities and an estimate of hours. It is making life much easier. He started applying for summer programs after his sophomore year, so started a resume at that time which we’ve continually updated.</p>
<p>The applications ask for the number of hrs per week/number of weeks per year, so it is a good idea to keep track of at least approximate # of hrs.</p>
<p>That said, just listing a high # of hrs does not really make a difference in admissions, unless there are some tangible accomplishments (started new charity, got regional or national award in recognition of his efforts, etc.)</p>
<p>It is best to track the hours. A lot of schol these days have requirements and there are systems in place to verify, but all you have to do is track a couple of typical weeks and then make a good faith estimate - if he doesn’t track them. They add up and some of the colleges he applies to might want to know. At the end of the day, they will care more about his essay.</p>
<p>Our school (public) requires 40 hrs. My son did a lot more than 40 but when he reached 40 he stopped turning in the documentation to school. Kids with over 100 hours got an award at awards night. Keeping a list would definitely be helpful because it seemed like every application and scholarship asked about it.</p>
<p>I will keep the mom list of dates, hours, and adult contact.</p>
<p>I asked him to start this last spring when he was spending 30+ hours/week on an EC with lots of volunteer stuff, but he ignored me. He beleives anything coordinated thru school (MLK events, etc) don’t count because it is a “school sponsored” event. I’m sure any list I keep will be on the low side of his actual hours since he doesn’t let me know all the school things.</p>
<p>Also, volunteering in your proposed “major” is important…Nursing is a prime example of this…It shows your dedication to your chosen major/field of study…</p>
<p>If you keep a spreadsheet or other list right now tracking ALL EC hours – not just volunteer work but anything else he does – it will make things a lot easier down the line to fill out college applications. The app forms typically ask for things like #hours spent weekly/monthly on various activities. Having a list to work from saves a lot of time & effort in reconstructing things 2 years down the line. The list does <em>not</em> have to be precise – the colleges aren’t going to ask for further documentation-- they are just trying to get a sense of the level of commitment. </p>
<p>Your son who doesn’t like the idea of tracking it all will end up being particularly appreciative of having things written down in the end, because he probably won’t like the idea of having to fill out all those details on the college application either. One thing you might want to do is to pull a copy of the common app to look what they ask for. This will give you an idea of the type of information you will want an need. </p>
<p>This will be important for private scholarship applications as well.</p>
<h1>2 never filled in all the detail on the common app for sports or hours. He was/is alittle rebellious about stuff like that. His reasoning was that there are only so much time available for stuff so it doesn’t matter how many hours because it’s a finite number. I was amused and the earth didn’t open and swallow him.</h1>
<p>My daughter also thinks tracking your hours and asking your “supervisor” to sign off on them takes away from the volunteer aspect of volunteering. But, documented hours are required at her school and awards and scholarships are offered for certain volunteer hours and achievements. Oh well, it gets those who would otherwise not volunteer to volunteer so at least it has some purpose. Hopefully this is the most annoying thing they need to do in their lives!</p>
<p>We never tracked our kids hours. I figure it’s more important WHAT you do than how long it takes you to do it. Both of our kids had activity resumes that included a section for Volunteer Service, but the service was listed by the activity. Within each listing we would put how long it took (example: tutoring - 1 hour twice a month). For reference, both of my kids are now happily enrolled at the colleges of their choice.</p>
<p>It has gotten abit silly I do think. My kids have to turn in senior hours and they do but I don’t think S even mentioned senior hours on his common app. He only wrote his sports, school related and other, and his volunteer activites that weren’t connected with the high school (with no total hours per week indicated.) I like the idea of volunteering (I volunteer for a couple organizations I believe in) but I don’t believe in volunteering for the sake of college app unless it’s genuine. If it’s genuine then it’s more of a private thing than something you hold up to be “evaluated”. Frankly I think if for some reason college just “have to know” (and I’m not sure why they have to know) it should be a short essay on the order of “do you volunteer anywhere if so why.” and forget the check list approach.</p>