<p>Okay, summer is almost over and daughter is headed back for senior year. Do your kids do outside volunteer work beside what they do for NHS? She is doing internship at hospital and taking couple AP/honors classes this year and I am sure she will be busy. She is also a competitive Irish dancer as well. </p>
<p>SHe did some volunteer work over the summer, but I don't think it's enough (Less than 50 hours). Should I strongly encourage her to do more when school starts? THere is a nursing home she can volunteer in. </p>
<p>Happykid’s school district requires X hours for graduation. She completed them some time ago, and she’s picked up some more hours here and there. When your kid finishes the HS graduation requirements, she can quit volunteering. Unless of course, she actually likes doing her volunteer job, it fits in her general schedule, and she doesn’t have to drop it in order to get a paid job.</p>
<p>mathson didn’t do any volunteer work except when things came up - i.e. someone asked him to write a program to do something. (He did spend one summer doing full time volunteering.) My younger son won’t continue at the senior center because they are open more or less the same hours as school. He’ll do the other project - which is a few hours most Saturdays (cataloging papers for the neighborhood association) because he loves doing it. He started doing it as a gov. requirement, but he loves it and will do it until everything’s been cataloged. I don’t think most colleges are looking for x number of volunteer hours, I think they are looking for kids doing interesting things that come out of who they are. If there’s more time for volunteering during the summer than the school year so be it.</p>
<p>“I think they are looking for kids doing interesting things that come out of who they are. If there’s more time for volunteering during the summer than the school year so be it.”</p>
<p>True. My kids didn’t do volunteer work to impress colleges, but because our family believes that volunteer work is important. However, they did volunteer work when they had time for it, and didn’t drop other activities in order to do volunteer work.</p>
<p>I think volunteer work is underated. SOme activities are just playtime, to be honest. SOme clubs are for show, and the kids know it. I would say the vast majority of HS clubs are useless, seriously. Irish Club? Movie Club? Better they used that time helping at a vets home.</p>
<p>Why do HS activies take precdence over helping your community, I will never know. My daughters learned more in the world, than in any school activity. Met more people of all walks of life, gained more insidght, did more good and becamse better people. </p>
<p>As a socieity we should push for helping others, than some activities at school. </p>
<p>If my child wanted to volunteer instead of a school activity, I would be all for it. School is very closed, very self involved. and as a society we need to get out of that mindset that ECs are all that.</p>
<p>I had a lot of volunteer work for my applications and I found it gave me a LOT of good essay material, I think it really made a difference in my application even if indirectly. I also think that for some kids it could tip the scales if they don’t have great ECs or leadership roles, because any kid can show up to club meetings but volunteer work shows initiative and character. If she can’t handle doing some extra volunteer work with everything else then it may not be worth it, but if she has the time I think it’s a good idea. I worked as a dog walker for the Humane Society my first two years of college, just two hours a week on Saturday mornings, and I LOVED it-- and I hated volunteer work when I first started. It’s definitely been the greatest experience of my life.</p>
<p>The hundreds of hours our kids spent in synagogue-related volunteer activities that benefitted the larger community – emergency relief during power outages, litter-pickups along rivers, repairing damaged cemeteries in poor neighborhoods, apple-picking to take to homeless shelters…didn’t count for the NYState h.s. graduation requirements for “community service” because it was all carried out under the auspices of a religious organization. </p>
<p>Their concern is well-founded, in a sense. The state doesn’t want churches using student time to proselytize the faith, going door-to-door, and call that “community service.” So all church/mosque/temple-initiated volunteer work, even if designed to help the larger community, doesn’t count in the accumulation of community service hours, as counted by the public schools, to graduate. </p>
<p>Our kids each squeaked out an additional, acceptable l0 hours per semester helping shelve books at the public library. </p>
<p>It was a good lesson in the separation of church and state as each came to understand why literally hundreds of hours their temple youth group spent in the community didn’t “count.” Other students racked up 500 hours in similar community service actions, but organized by secular entitities. Those kids won awards at h.s. graduation. It just is.</p>
<p>" think volunteer work is underated. SOme activities are just playtime, to be honest. SOme clubs are for show, and the kids know it. I would say the vast majority of HS clubs are useless, seriously. Irish Club? Movie Club? Better they used that time helping at a vets home.</p>
<p>Why do HS activies take precdence over helping your community, "</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many kids and their parents view volunteer work simply as padding for college apps or as ways to fulfill high school requirements. Consequently, many students who volunteer don’t bother to do volunteer work that matches their interests and skills. They are perfectly happy to do nothing while “volunteering” as long as they get credit for volunteer hours.</p>
<p>This is sad because they’re missing out on the pleasure of learning that they can take actions that make the world a better place. They’re also missing out on developing skills and finding out about careers and fields that match their interests and skills.</p>
<p>True, a lot of high school clubs are silly. My high school actually had no classes on Wednesday and made us do volunteer work that day. I learned a lot from the various things I did - worked in a care facility for kids whose parents were incarcerated (loved it), tutoring at a school (hated it - felt I was incompetent anyway), on Capital Hill (eye-opening), for a political magazine (really fun). I agree that learning about the real world and working with people of different ages was one of the real benefits. As an adult I’ve found my volunteer activities immensely enriching as well. I do feel like it’s one area that I didn’t really push my kids as much as I should of. They did neighborhood clean-ups and some activities through our religious institution when they were younger, but I wish ew’d found activities that worked better as they got older. My younger son is teaching seniors origami this summer and has enjoyed that.</p>
<p>I recall reading that in Japan, elementary students are brought weekly to senior homes for a half-day, throughout their early learning years. Part of their in-school curriculum in Citizenship is teaching them to pay attention to elderly needs in their village, town or city. I certainly admire that.</p>
<p>NYS has community service requirements? That’s odd…our HS must not enforce this as I’ve never heard it mentioned before! I only know of one school near us that has such a requirement and thought it was a bit ridiculous as they’re in a pretty small village. Wondered how the community organizations could handle all these kids who were only there to fulfill an hours requirement.</p>
<p>Anyway, many seniors have part time jobs that become their main EC. The colleges and scholarships my D applied for recognized that as well. She continued with longstanding volunteer work, her sport, and one school club but didn’t attempt to start new things senior year. She was very busy as it was!</p>
<p>D did not volunteer during school year in HS. However, she did for 2 years during school year in college. She dropped it because of Research Internship that she is starting this year. She also works, sorority board (takes much more time than other EC’s), has 2 minors and maintains 4.0. It is all time management and desire to do certain activity. If your D. does not want to do it, she should not, if she wants she will manage.</p>
<p>DD volunteered for one hour every Saturday for eight years. I did it with her. It fit our schedule and was just a component of every week. Like many CCers she also held a part time job, participated in ECs, etc.
We did not do it or anything for the hours. The same non profit has kids who show up once in a while for the hours either because they belong to NCL or because they have a probation condition. I told the center I did not want to work with those kids. Couldn’t stand their attitude.<br>
For me vounteering has nothing to do with college apps. I have always had some form of vounteering in my schedule and want to instill that in my kids. The idea that part of living in a community if contributing.
I definitely did a better job of it with younger D than with older S.</p>
<p>Our high school also has a minimal number of hours of volunteering that is required, and the majority of kids just do that minimum. While volunteering obviously says something about the person, it isn’t going to make or break a college application. A well-rounded student might have engaged in clubs, sports, a job, or other time commitments in lieu of volunteering. Yes, it is possible that certain schools may weigh volunteering as a tipping factor if all other factors are equal. Every school is likely to have different tipping factors. For ex., a science school is likely to be more impressed by research projects than by volunteering at a nursing home. </p>
<p>Either a kid shows a consistent pattern of volunteering that somehow defines him or her as a person, or does the minimum that is required by the school and NHS (colleges obviously know that number). Suddenly adding volunteer hours as a JR or Senior is unlikely to convince anyone that the kid has always been dedicated to community service. </p>
<p>My D has over 600 hours of volunteering at a hospital, where she has worked since age 15. Whether the local library, hospitals, nursing homes, science museum, charity events, there are some kids who have spent years committed to community service. The “regulars” (and the nice ladies in the volunteering office at the hospital where my kid works) joke a little about the high school students who show up the summer before they are Seniors or in the Fall of Senior year, just so they can list volunteering on their college or scholarship applications. </p>
<p>If OP’s kid has a passion for a particular form of community service or volunteering, that’s great! IMO, if the only reason to get some hours of volunteering is to try to impress an Adcom late in the game, I’d say that they’ll see through it and to emphasize her other strengths instead.</p>