<p>I currently have an 8th grader who doesn’t do much of anything. She has a lot of “food fears” so she won’t go away to any kind of camp over the summer either. She has friends who do too much, IMHO, but she does too little.</p>
<p>Her school will require at least one sport/year and some volunteer hours but it probably won’t look like much. Her school doesn’t have any clubs like NHS that are strictly for name.</p>
<p>I don’t want her to resume pad but she needs to something just to do something! She’s a bit low energy and will not use her time well if she has too much of it to just lounge around with. What if she ends up writing her college essay about how cute her dogs are? Well, that could actually be pretty funny but I don’t want her to have nothing else to write about. This child needs a bit of a jolt!</p>
<p>I volunteered 200 hours at a local organic small-scale farm and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Definitely my greatest summer. (I didn’t do it exclusively for resume padding, but that does help…)</p>
<p>
Me too! It was never why I did anything, but it was a factor/afterthought.</p>
<p>I was very active in extracurriculars when I was a freshman and a sophomore, but when junior year rolled by, I became much more interested in making my resum</p>
<p>I did the IB program at my school PURELY for the hopes of it boosting my admission chances. I will consider it to be a failure if I get into less than 3 of my top 5 choices (so far is 1/2, with one acceptance to Michigan and one deferal to Boston College)</p>
<p>For my primary ECs, like tennis, violin, track, math/physics teams, I did because I enjoyed them (well not track as much, but I did it for the athletic benefits). For some smaller things, like newspaper, it was because friends did it and I wanted to be with them. But for some things like NHS that are relatively minute, I went for officer positions just to pad, since I figured I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.</p>
<p>I did get a job to earn money for my tennis spending, but there was an element of padding there too.</p>
<p>I retained a leadership position on the school newspaper staff directly because of my parents, indrectly because of college.</p>
<p>As it turned out, it wasn’t significant enough to be included in my app anyway (no space), and I definitely didn’t feel like talking about it in interviews.</p>
<p>I am a high school teacher in a very large IB school. Most of my students, who are required to be involved in the community (required hours) tend to choose activities they really are interested in. Of course there are a number of kids who strictly volunteer for the hours and when they are finished, they are definitely finished. And I unfortunately know of other students who blatantly lie about the weekly hours spent in their different clubs and their responsibilities with them. But, for the most part most of the kids seem to be pretty up and up regarding their choices. Some, like my daughter, want to be involved in everything and others do very little. Typical kids. I do feel that a person’s character is reflected by what they claim to do verses what they actually do. Some promote their activities well, others downplay them and others fabricate. It also happens in the adult world, as I have seen plenty of great self-promoters and fabricators who never seem to get caught, but even so, people know. I guess it boils down to what I preach to both my children and my students; you have to be proud of the face staring back at you in the mirror.</p>
<p>Unlike it has been stated in this thread, I am not afraid to admit that I started volunteering at my local rescue squad solely for the colleges’ benefit. However, after a few months I genuinely became interested in my volunteer work and went ahead and got certified as an EMT. I plan on continuing this even now as my college apps are sent in and will likely do this in college too. I may not have started for the most noble reasons, but now i love it!</p>
<p>Our public school system requires community service for graduation. One of my kids did what was required and that was it. Didn’t make any bones about it on his resume. The other one attended a local archaeology day camp in 3rd and 4th grade, and went back every summer starting in 8th to be a CIT, then volunteer counselor there. The S likes to play in the dirt – what can I say! He also spent many hours cooking for various non-profits. Between those two activities, he accumulated a substantial number of hours and he used his CA short essay to talk about one of them. Same kid refused to play politics to get a leadership post in an activity he’d been significantly involved with since 9th grade. Would have been nice if he had, but it was his decision and I wasn’t pushing him.</p>
<p>One of my kids asked why he’d want to attend school with a bunch of kids who did things they hated just for the sake of getting in? Sounded pretty miserable to him.</p>
<p>Sometimes the things we are “expected” to do have the unintended (happy) consequence of leading us into new interests, passions or career path (i.e., becoming an EMT). I know someone who started working at a rape crisis line for community service (doing clerical work), progressed to running a call center in college, and is now going back to grad school for her MSW so she can work with abused women and children.</p>
<p>^I’ve seen this happen a lot with the CAS requirements for my school’s IB program. I think there’s a real benefit to encouraging kids to fulfill certain requirements, like athletics or community service. A lot of kids don’t have well-developed passions in high school, and encouraging kids to get involved can lead to new interests. </p>
<p>That being said, for the kids who have specific interests, these requirements can be stifling. I find it incredibly difficult to balance 150 hours of CAS with debate, my writing aspirations (lit mag, writing club, this poetry mentorship thing I have, writing on my own, etc), my interest in French, and the dabbling I’ve done in clubs like Student Council and maintain my grades. The IB program is very tailored to the well-rounded student–the one good at all school subjects with the time to devote to them who loves volunteering at the soup kitchen or the animal shelter. I imagine certain privates are like this as well. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can constrict the kids who already have direction.</p>
<p>No. ZERO. However, I’ve seen many others who do it for transcript decoration.</p>
<p>National Honor’s Society is definitely transcript decoration.</p>
<p>And so are useless clubs.</p>
<p>If that person joins variety of clubs, he’s gaming the system. </p>
<p>A passionate student will join clubs that are related or similar to his interests. </p>
<p>Me, I joined like 1 club because everyone in IB does, and it helps me get connected with people whom I’ve gone through for 4 years. </p>
<p>I love chess, and I couldn’t start a club, so I played at home, at tournaments, etc. and demonstrated it in my college app essay.</p>
<p>No college has rejected me yet, and I applied to 0 safeties.</p>
<p>I’ve never actually joined an activity because it looked good on my resume - all of the activities I do, I’ve done since 9th grade, many for longer. I love everything I do.</p>
<p>HOWEVER - with that being said - I’m not going to lie; within my activities, I’ve definitely taken on a few extra responsibilities, or even leadership roles, because I knew it would look better on my resume, even if I didn’t exactly have time for it. For instance, I volunteered to chair the Blood Drive Committee (our chapter of National Honor Society organizes a blood drive every year), rather than simply participating in it, and ran for Vice President of the Interact Club (I got the position). However, I don’t regret either of these things. I am considering being a doctor some day, so being so involved with the blood drive was a great opportunity for me to meet a lot of interesting people, and I’m actually going to intern with one of the people I talked with (our school has mandatory senior internships at the end of the year). </p>
<p>In conclusion, like someone else said, I never picked up an activity purely because of college…I just worked a little bit harder knowing that college admissions were ahead.</p>
<p>By the way - National Honor Society in our school is something you are invited to if you have a certain GPA. You have to apply by writing an essay about leadership; it’s pretty selective (there’s a panel of teachers who choose the students). At my school, at least, it’s not something you can just “join.”</p>
<p>Its the same at my school, but its ridiculously easy to get in. You only need a 90.001 WEIGHTED gpa, and then a two or three paragraph mini-essay about how you have been a leader. Literally a third of the class is accepted, many more qualify with their GPA but dont actually apply because of it lack of value. In my class, we had 96 get in, something like 5 rejected, because they didnt hand in their stuff on time.</p>
<p>I go to a public school in the Silicon Valley, and the competition for ECs is INTENSE. People starts tons of clubs first semester, then they all die (the clubs). People appear to do random things just since it “will look good.” It’s pathetic. I do all of the activities I do simply since I can’t picture my life without them. </p>
<p>Honor societies are somewhat ridiculous at our school, and I would say the only ECs that actually involve commitment are debate, sports, and robotics.</p>
<p>No, I generally don’t like volunteer work and never got involved in it, much less for the resume. </p>
<p>This kid from school started a medical club entirely for the purpose of writing it on his application. I joined at once because I’m interested in med, but I dropped it after a while because all we ever talked about was SAT scores. <em>gak</em> I would be ashamed of myself if I ever did anything like that. When app time came around, I looked at things that I had really done, and I found that I had a lot more than I had expected. So the resume padding wouldn’t have helped anyways.</p>
<p>NHS at my kids’ schools didn’t require an astronomical GPA, either, but they wanted extra community service and essays. Neither of mine were willing to do that for a line on a resume. Ditto the subject honor societies.</p>
<p>My daughter’s not that much of a joiner or a doer. She prefers solitary pursuits like reading or listening to recorded lectures. She takes voice lessons. She goes to religious school. She performs in the ensemble in school plays. Her summers have been spent at overnight camp (as a camper) where he has a great time and learns a lot of (non-academic) stuff. </p>
<p>I will confess that looking at college admissions requirements has made me think we should have pushed her much harder to be involved in organized activities, to seek out leadership roles, to have some documented “service hours,” etc.</p>
<p>Sikorsky,
Both my kids found a way to incorporate their non-school related interests (organized or not) into their essays or activity resumes. I had some of the same concerns with one of my kids. Your D sounds like the introspective sort, so I’m sure she’ll be able to write something meaningful that shows who she is and how she thinks.</p>