Volunteering work helllpppppp please!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>I'm currently in grade 9, only have one term left to the end of school year (I live in Australia). I have been doing voluntary work at a retirement home for 2hr/weekly since July this year. I hate it. I'm going to be honest, the only reason I did it was there was limited volunteer opportunities in Australia for 14 year olds. I'm passionate about helping the community, business, homelessness, slavery and poverty. I want to volunteer at a soup kitchen but it is too far from where I live. </p>

<p>Recently I have join my councils youth program - we plan activities within the area, write for magazines, help the council in projects such as increasing activity/population within an area. There is alot of work and leadership involved, does this count as voluntary work? </p>

<p>Additionally, I am a UNICEF Young Ambassador, I spend 3 hours weekly with other ambassadors working on projects. Does this count as voluntary work? </p>

<p>If so, am I able to quit the retirement home? Well Harvard, Stanford and other Ivies see this as voluntary work? </p>

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<p>The colleges you mention don’t expect all their applicants to perform volunteer work. If you hate it, then quit doing it. </p>

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<p>I completely agree with @Sherpa. If you hate volunteering at the retirement home, then quit doing it!</p>

<p>FWIW: The middle school my children attended required students to do 100 hours of community service in order to graduate. Unfortunately, the experience left my kids hating volunteering. So, when my they got to high school, my son and daughter didn’t do any community service – zero, zilch, none. And that didn’t stop them from being accepted to HYP and about 15 other top colleges. Admissions directors understand that many high schools require community service/volunteer hours for students to graduate, so they are not counting them as bonus points in the application process (something they used to do). It’s nice to have volunteering or community service hours on your resume, but if you don’t have them, it’s not a deal breaker. Their absence won’t even raise an eyebrow.</p>

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<p>@akova1, typically, I’ve heard the term “community service,” not “voluntary work.” All the alternative activities in which you engage apart from the retirement home work would readily count as “community service.” </p>

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<p>Thank you for your help! @gibby @sherpa and @notjoe - however, I’m going to continue doing voluntary work to the end of the year, thus I would have completed 6 months of voluntary work. When I apply for the Ivies and safeties should I specify this? I know that its not the hours that impress them most but the long term commitment. Should I leave this out of it? Also, the UNICEF ambassador role is only for a year - in grade 10. I will not be able to reapply the following years. </p>

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<p>Whether to put your retirement home service in or not depends on your circumstances. If you have many other activities where you’ve demonstrated longer-term participation, commitment, and leadership, you could omit this experience. I’ve read that the Common App limits somewhat just how many extracurriculars one may list, now, so you’ll want to prioritize your list and put down the ones that are most important.</p>

<p>But if your list isn’t that long, it’s not going to hurt to put it down. Regarding the UNICEF experience, you may want to list it something like this: UNICEF Ambassador - 2014 (one year, non-renewable appointment). Or something like that.</p>

7

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Your EC list is just that – A LIST – nothing more. If you write “Community Service, 500 gazillion hours over 4 years” or “UNICEF Ambassador - 2014 (one year, non-renewable appointment)” that tells Admissions that you spent a lot of time volunteering. But, it doesn’t explain WHY you are passionate it, what you got out of it and what it personally means to you. For Admissions to understand that, you must write an essay about the topic. Harvard’s Supplemental Application asks for a 150 word essay about an extracurricular activity. If this is your main EC, you should write an essay about some aspect of volunteering. Or, you could write your Common App essay about it. But, keep in mind that Admissions Officers are not mind-readers, there’s just so much they can glean from looking over an EC list. And, just as a footnote: AO’s spend more time looking over an applicant’s transcript and essay than they do looking over their EC list. So, I would focus more on the essay and not worry so much on how you list things on your EC list. </p>

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<p>Thanks for your help. Schools in WA however don’t have a transcript fro, 9-12 only from years 11-12!! And when I apply, we wouldn’t have got our transcript yet because our exams would be in November </p>

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<p>^^ You have much to learn in the college applications process. All selective colleges, Harvard included, are academic institutions – they are not extracurricular playspaces. As such, your transcript, along with your course rigor and GPA is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of your file (whether that is grades 9-12 or 11-12). Next, for any selective college, would come your teacher recommendations, essays and test scores. EC’s are probably somewhere near the bottom, and they help Admissions understand how you have taken advantage of the resources available to you. I’m not aware of one Admissions Office anywhere that recruits students from their EC’s. Take a look at this from the College Board: <a href=“https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-started/video-transcription/whats-the-most-important-part-of-the-application”>https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-started/video-transcription/whats-the-most-important-part-of-the-application&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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