<p>Okay two part question:
1. For undergraduate admission to any top school, does it really matter if you have a job or work, can you just volunteer a lot (we be like ~750 hours for me)?</p>
<ol>
<li>For graduate school they say you need work experience, but does that mean if you do not work 4-6 years or something you can not get accepted? Money really isn't an issue and I just want to get through all my education all at once, hopefully going to HBS some time from now.</li>
</ol>
<p>Although it’s not necessary to have work experience, it is still highly recommended. It is very hard to go from undergrad straight to grad business school, but it is not impossible.</p>
<p>I didn’t have any formal work experience when I applied…just a lot of volunteer experience and one short, unpaid internship.</p>
<p>I’ve been looking at different MBA programs, and while most recommend that you have some work experience, some offer special programs for students straight out of undergrad or explicitly state that it doesn’t matter either way.</p>
<p>you can get work experience during the summers while you’re in college, and they’re likely to be more meaningful since you’re earning a degree (and therefore have some specialized skills and maturity to offer.)</p>
<p>when I applied I had never held a job, and I didn’t even have massive amounts of volunteering either. seems to have worked out OK since then.</p>
<p>I work and volunteer a lot in HS and I have to say that I learned so much more about myself/the world/how things work/life through working a menial minimum wage job than volunteering. Volunteering was boring and a… comfortable thing to do for me (I am upper classish, or at least live in a wealthy area). Working a crappy job put me out of my comfort zone and forced me to deal with people with whom I would not have had to, or done things that I never would have done had I not had that job.</p>