<p>So I have recently been reading a lot about how colleges actually frown on students who volunteer too much in a wide range of areas that don't connect. For a year, I have been volunteering online with a cancer organization as a researcher. My research goes to help inform cancer patients about their disease, treatment, ect. Last year (my sophomore year), I became a certified reading tutor with the Youth LIterary Foundation, and I plan on offering free tutoring to elementary students starting this year. Also, I recently volunteered at a hospital as a part of a summer program. Over the next two years, I also plan on volunteering at a pet shelter. Finally, I am volunteering to help at the whole food's cooking school, where I will help run kids cooking classes. I love animals, teaching, and helping out in general; however, none of these fall under one specific cause. Do you think colleges will think I am simply volunteering at all of these places for hours? Will this hurt me? Or will they be able to see my passion for several different causes?</p>
<p>I don’t know if it is so much frowning upon, but rather they may feel that students are trying to pad their resumes. But you do have some connection. The reading and cooking are tied to helping kids. The cancer and the hospital go together. The animals stand on its own. The thing is don’t spread yourself too thin. Also it may be better to focus on one or two directions because you can have more of an effect than giving partial effort to too many causes. Of course, trying different things isn’t bad to lead you in that major direction.</p>
<p>I have also done a lot of volunteer work, however I think I may have found a way to connect them all. I volunteer as a tutor, at the soup kitchen, at the hospital, and at many hospice related events, however my plan is to say that my main goal in life is to positively affect the lives of as many as possible and to do so I volunteer through all these different programs to affect a larger arrange of people. So, essentially I’m not just helping the poor or the sick, but instead I’m also helping people from the middle class or even higher. I also donate blood as often as possible and I am a huge supporter of that, so now I’m affecting even more people positively. I’m hoping my plan will work.</p>
<p>It becomes “too much volunteering” when you spend so much time on it that it interferes with your school work.</p>
<p>If you would curtail or otherwise change your volunteering because of “how it looks to colleges” (or, more precisely, how you think it would look to colleges), that strikes me as a little bit shallow.</p>