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I think this is incredibly regional, socioeconomic and personal. In your area starting a non-profit may be rare, but I am absolutely in the jaundiced view as something like 1/3-1/2 of the ākidsā at our private middle school were all starting random nonprofits in 8th grade. 8-10 years ago there was a definite perceived bump and wealthy parents were making sure their kid would have a track record of starting a nonprofit so they could talk about it for their college apps. Iām sure there are still many kids who do if for their own personal reasons having nothing to do with college apps - but there are a ton who do it for college apps and honestly it seems to have become as much of a detriment as a benefit based on the results we saw locally.
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My region has a well regarded consultant whose specialty is helping HS kids start their own non-profit! Seriously!
Agree itās regional/socio-economic/personal. The kids in the Eagle Scout ecosystem do different service projects than the kids in the parochial schools and those are different from what the prep school kids do.
Which is why itās so hard to convince people āDo what interests youā. Because if itās manufactured, guaranteed that someone else is doing it better!!!
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I think it can be a positive if the student is very descriptive on what was done. Donāt say āformed a non-profitā if the tax documents werenāt really filed.
- Raised $5000 by holding a rummage sale at the school/church/community center.
-Worked with the Red Cross to raise $6350 for storm relief. Or served 100 meals on Thanksgiving. Or worked 200 hours building a playground.
-Organized the Buddy Walk at my school for 3 years, signing up 160 walkers.
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My kids go to public school and nobody is starting a charitable organization here. Definitely not in middle school for show. I get it.
What is the detriment you see if they are doing the volunteering?
Also, my daughter just got accepted to Colorado College this evening with a full ride, and write about her volunteering in her application. They even mentioned how impressed they were with it in her acceptance letter, so, Iām guessing colleges arenāt as cynical about it as you may think.
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Volunteering is a legitimate and admirable activity that benefits the community. AOs like to see that. The āred flagā Is starting a non-profit that clearly appears to be set up solely for college apps (most likely with the help of affluent and well connected parents).
For example, does a Bay Area kid really need to incorporate yet another āgirls in STEMā or climate change activism 501c(3) instead of volunteering at one of the hundreds of existing non-profits that have the same purpose?
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The elite college admission system is about as corrupt as anything can be. And I went to one! You cannot blame kids and parents for trying to manipulate the system.
For your considerationā¦
A week before my freshman year of high school, my (overbearing) Asian parents took me to a private college counselorās office. This person used to be an AO at Stanford, quit her job, and now spends her time coaching students to build the perfect resume to get into super selective colleges.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/fqo68j/aos_cant_actually_detect_authenticity_or_passion/?sort=new
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That was one depressing essay. I totally believe it to be true, with respect to kids being nudged/forced into ECs that their heart is not into in order to get to a Top X school and then doing a 180 towards highly lucrative fields. The part that was super depressing was the ending paragraph of,
So if any underclassmen are reading this, just remember: if youāre aiming for HYPS, aim for excellenceānot necessarily authenticity. I mean if I spent my high school years doing what I loved the most, I wouldāve spent them hiking, painting (Iām decent at it but not good enough to get Stanfordās attention), writing (ditto with painting) and getting high. That most likely wouldnāt have led me to Stanford.
The writerās conclusion isnāt about being authentic even if that doesnāt mean HYPS. The close is to basically excellently fake whatever you need to do to get to HYPS. And I find THAT depressing.
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Yeah, not a good message.
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Yeah this is not good to hear. Itās upsetting that people do stuff just to get in and then throw it away after but I guess thatās the real world.
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The āeliteā colleges are looking for kids who can achieve a lot, because they are the kids who will bring positive attention, and often money, to the college.
There is no actual way for AOs to know whether an applicant is āpassionateā or āauthenticā based on the application, or even based on an interview. However, the accomplishments are very obvious.
Moreover, to be entirely honest, passion or authenticity without talent and drive is not very helpful to any college. Passion and authenticity wonāt get them As or academic awards, if the kid does not have the academic abilities to do well in class. Passion and authenticity will not, on their own, ensure that a kid will succeed after college either.
On the other hand, a kid who achieves a lot in activities for which they have only a moderate amount of passion is a very good choice. Their ability to do a lot, even if they lack interest in a topic, is a good indicator that they will do well in classes and projects, including those which do not interest them that much. Moreover, if they are able to achieve a lot without having passion for the activity, they will likely achieve a even more when they find their interests and passions. Those achievements, as opposed to their high school achievements, will usually reflect well on the college, and may benefit the college in other ways (including financial).
Despite what they write in the brochures, āeliteā private colleges are mostly interested in what you have done, what you can do, and what you can do for them. They are less interested in whether you do these out of passion or not.
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thanks for that link to reddit above. I havenāt looked at reddit for awhile - comments there are so different than ones here. Youth!
speaking of passion-projects and college admissions - my #3 kid did something 10, 11 & 12 grds that honestly was probably our favorite family experience ever. He started it out of boredom (a haunted house in our garage complete with lights,sounds, people, chain saws, 7 rooms built from autocad designs, clowns - you got it). He started in Sept. getting ready for it every year.
His English teacher made his class write grants as a section; he wrote about expanding his haunted house to a coat drive and he ended up winning a national grant for the project. It was so exciting. (he shared some of the other grant projects written in class - soccer lessons for impoverished youth; STEM clubs, food donations, etc. He told me the girls in his class scoffed at his haunted house proposal; but he ended up with a wad of paper green.)
We had traffic jams the next two years in our neighborhood, hundreds and hundreds of people coming through, featured in the news, waiting lines down the street and hundreds of coats donated. It was wonderful and so much fun!
he was a high stats kid (4.7/34ACT) and decided on his own to try to use this and his stats to get into some top schools - but nothing came of it. I let him do that all on his own, because i knew we couldnt really afford any need-based schools, donut family. Iāve always wondered, though, if we had got him help with essays and really put in effort if it would have turned out differently. He took auto-merit and is loving college. thx for reading this - a trip down memory lane jogged by that reddit post of a kid who was forced into having a nonprofit but not interested in it. S20 left for college in 2020; so that covid year was of course a good reason why our family or his younger sibling didnt carry on the project.
rambling, i know, but memories dear to our hearts over a project that defined our kid for 3 years, that had nothing to do with college admissions.
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Iām not sure how passionate I am about any extracurricular activity (I have a very high standard for its use). I donāt think kids need to be āpassionateā about all their activities and I agree that colleges (especially highly rejective ones) want to see people who do well in their activities. But to me thereās a difference when youāre spending years of your life doing something that you donāt really like. You might be great at it, but you donāt like it. Sure, when you find your passion you might be even better. But is it worth sacrificing years of oneās life (whether thatās high school years aiming for a Top X school or oneās working lifetime) doing something you donāt like? Thatās the part I find depressing.
Itās not that someone should be passionate and super excited about what theyāre doing, but it shouldnāt be negative feelings about the activity, just to get into a super rejective school/field.
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Itās especially depressing given that this strategy isnāt always going to bear fruit. No student should leave HS feeling like they wasted their time doing things they hate in pursuit of a T20 acceptance that never materializes.
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It is also especially depressing because it turns the children that this young woman āhelpedā into props for her college ambition. In my mind that is not service, it is performance.
Iām not a purist. I donāt think that having an ulterior motive while doing good work necessarily negates the good that the volunteer does. Still using under resourced community as a way of showing a college that you care about painting is not the same thing as caring about either art or your community. And I worry that when we encourage secondary school students to do that sort of volunteering, the lessons that they learn are about manipulation not empathy. I believe that is why some high schools donāt have community service requirements. It is not service if it is coerced by your school or your parent (or the college counselor that your parent hires).
On the other hand, kids are not automatically empathetic and I think for at least some kids being pushed to work with a service organization can lead to greater self-awareness and greater empathy for others. That is a good outcome (a win for the community being served and a win for the kid). Unfortunately, I am not sure that we can always predict when a 14yo or 16yo starts volunteering whether the service work will result in positive character development or just cynicism. Presumably if the moment they are admitted into college, they drop any kind of service and never engage in it again, it is a sign that the community service led to cynicism not character growth.
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Yes, I agree. Itās sad that kids canāt be kids and really just pursue what they are interested in.
But they can just be kids. Why canāt they just do what they are interested in? There is nothing stopping them, except pressure to get into a top college and the belief that just being yourself wonāt work. It drives me nuts that so many parents push their kids this way.
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I totally agree. My kids pursue what they are interested in- may not make the schools goo and gah but they enjoy it. But I see many of my kids friends pursue things or create things just for the purpose of being accepted into a top 20 college.
Even when this is not the case, does it strike anyone as interesting that a presumably diverse group of high school seniors with high achievements in academics and diverse extracurriculars admitted to some place like Harvard or Princeton will, four years later, be much less diverse in their future directions, with large percentages going into investment banking and management consulting?
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Yup. I actually think it is unfortunate that so many grads from top schools gravitate towards a handful of high paying careers. It really siphons off a lot of the intellectual capital in our country - capital that could (in my view) be better used to address any number of problems instead of focusing on how to make rich people richer.
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