WSJ: Summer "Do Good" Tours for Polishing Applicant Resumes

[sewhappy]

<p>parent1986 – sorry if my own posts have offended. You’re right. Parents who resort to these expensive boondoggles for their kids are sincerely trying to help them and it is not cool to mock them for that. The truth is that most parents who frequent CC are up to all sorts of dubious tactics to help their kids have some sort of admissions edge. This one is just really expensive, so draws attention.</p>

[MNFlyer]

<p>What message are the parents who purchase these expensive trips sending to their children? I think they are saying that it is OK to use suffering third worlders as props–as resume builders.</p>

<p>If one actually cares about the fate of these poor people, one could send the amount one would squander on a trip to a charity that could help alleviate the suffering much more effectively. </p>

<p>Surely the amount of actual help an American teenager could deliver in a week of a “suffering tour” is trivial. The idea that real suffering of real people is leveraged to generate some kind of revelatory experience that can be expounded upon in an admissions essay makes me want to barf.</p>

<p>This is Ugly Americanism at its worst.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>I think there are a lot of points on a continuum when it comes to these kinds of trips. The church I go to has been sponsoring “work trips” for youth for nearly 40 years. They generally go to some relatively impoverished area (ie. Appalachia), and they do primarily physical labor such as repairing houses or community buildings. The vacation-like elements are minimized but not completely absent. Periodically they do a foreign trip. Usually these are done in conjunction with some charitable group that essentially packages the work for church groups–so they work on teams with kids (and adults) from other churches. I don’t think the church does this in order to bolster resumes for college, and I don’t think most of the families do it for that reason, either. That being said, it is partly for the benefit of the recipients of the work, and partly for the benefit of the kids going on the trip–it exposes them to situations of need, it lets them work in a team environment, they learn some skills, and there is often a spiritual element to the program. While it might be more efficient to just work in the home area, there are benefits to the trip–including getting more kids to do it. Both of my kids did it, and I think it was a beneficial consciousness-raising experience for them. Also, my daughter learned how to do electrical wiring.</p>

<p>It would be a shame if all of the programs like this are discounted as college resume padding.</p>

<p>

If one actually cares about the fate of these poor people, one could send the amount one would squander on a trip to a charity that could help alleviate the suffering much more effectively.

While there is some truth to this, it reminds me of “could not this costly ointment have been sold, and the money given to the poor?”</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>

In the last decade, however, the summer in Paris or on the open seas has lost its glimmer for many of our most ambitious high school students, who now prefer combining international travel with community service experiences in desperately poor countries. The elite college-bound teen now wants—with the zeal of the convert and the focused intensity of a safe cracker—to “give back.” Never, ever get between a Yale applicant and his or her chance to give back. You will be mowed down in an instant.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This article is incorrect. Rich kids stopped doing the summer in Paris by the 80’s. When I was in high school, I knew plenty of people that were going on trips to 3rd World Countries to pad their applications. It’s only within the last decade that colleges have realized that this stuff was contrived. With respect to catching this fakery, college adcoms are about as good at it as major league baseball is at catching PED users. Baseball players used steroids all through the 90’s, and now major league baseball brags about its system to detect steroids. Meanwhile, players are using HGH.</p>

<p>At best, a community service project shows organizational ability and the ability and willingness to recognize what is wanted from your future boss or customer. College adcoms want community service, so kids do community service. College and future bosses want you to wear a tie to your interview as well. It doesn’t show altruism or a propensity to engage in community service activities in the future.</p>

<p>Can colleges tell the difference between genuine altruism and resume’ padding? Do they have a good BS detector in general? I don’t think so.</p>

[Bay]

<p>I think it is funny and weird that some people get so bent out of shape about rich parents sending their kids on trips to see the world and get down with the common folk. Why is there anything inherently wrong with it?</p>

<p>The author of the article just assumes that parents who do this are stupid, and do it for college admissions. How does he even know that is what they think? For all we know, they may think their kids are sheltered and dependent, need to be sent away on their own to grow up, with dependable chaperoning, while learning more about the world. What is so wrong with that?</p>

<p>If a poor kid got a scholarship to do the same thing, would everyone be jumping all over his parents?</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>It’s hard to have confidence that elite colleges can detect when something is BS when a college like Yale can admit a guy like Aleksey Vayner. (Note: Vayner changed his name from Garber.) Here is a snippet on this guy from the New Yorker:</p>

<p>

Four and a half years ago, Jordan Bass, a freshman at Yale, met a tall blond Uzbek immigrant named Aleksey Garber—a prospective student who, in this era of increased specialization, stood out for his almost cartoonish well-roundedness: a twenty-first-century Renaissance man. Last week, Garber achieved notoriety when a job application that he’d submitted to investment banks was forwarded, with sarcastic glee (“Certainly one way to get your foot in the door . . .”), around the young-professionals circuit, but back in 2002 he was still a student at Manhattan’s Dwight School. He told Bass that he’d taught tennis to Jerry Seinfeld and Harrison Ford. He was a specialist in “Chinese orthopedic massage,” and had the business card to prove it. The Dalai Lama had apparently written his college recommendation.</p>

<p>The occasion for the Bass-Garber meeting was Bulldog Days, an annual event where high-school seniors who have been admitted to Yale descend on New Haven for a sample of collegiate life: beer-drinking, pizza, relentless a capella. Garber preferred to remain in the dorm and tell Yalies all about himself. “He talked for, like, six hours straight the first night,” Bass, who is now an editor at McSweeney’s, recalled the other day. “He had a lot of affiliations with élite institutions. He was an action star, an espionage expert, and a professional athlete. He would be on the C.I.A. firing range one day and, the next, at a martial-arts competition that took place in this secret system of tunnels underneath Woodstock, New York. Then he was at a skiing competition in Switzerland. He told us the Russian Mafia had him forging passports.”</p>

<p>One of Bass’s roommates began surreptitiously transcribing Garber’s James Bond-like stories. “He became kind of a circus attraction,” Bass said. “By the end of the weekend, we were bringing people over just to sit by him and listen.” Bass tried calling the number on Garber’s card, and reached an older-sounding woman. “It seemed like it might have been his mom, or something,” he said. Bass wrote an article for the campus tabloid, Rumpus, entitled “CRAAAZY PREFROSH LIES, IS JUST WEIRD.” </p>

<p>Garber decided to attend Yale anyway. (Upon arriving, he sent Bass an e-mail complaining that the Rumpus story belittled his Buddhism.) Since then, he has changed his last name to Vayner, and, at least by his own account, started modelling (he charges two hundred dollars an hour), written a book (“Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust”), founded a charity for troubled kids, served as an adviser at an investment firm called Vayner Capital Management, taken up ballroom dancing (the international rumba is his specialty), won two games in a tennis match against Pete Sampras, retired from professional martial arts, and mastered the art of “bone-setting.” He is now a senior. He chose to include much of this information in his résumé, which referred potential employers to a short video depicting him at the gym (evidently, he bench-presses nearly five hundred pounds), serving a tennis ball (a hundred and forty miles an hour, or so it appears), skiing, ballroom-dancing, and splitting a stack of bricks with his bare hand.</p>

<p>Read more [Top</a> This: Aleksey the Great : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023ta_talk_mcgrath#ixzz1STrY8zuS]Top”>Aleksey the Great | The New Yorker)

</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>And here is the amazing Vayner video resume’.<br>
[Where</a> can I find the Aleksey Vayner Video Resume? | WallStreetOasis.com](<a href=“http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/where-can-i-find-the-aleksey-vayner-video-resume]Where”>Aleksey Vayner Interview from ROFLCON | Wall Street Oasis)</p>

[sujormik]

<p>My rising senior D started in 3rd grade participating as a volunteer peer mentor for a theater program set up for kids with special needs (mostly Down Syndrome and wide ranges on the autism spectrum, though other challenges as well). She’s starting her 10th year in September, has become a valued member of the team, made some amazing friendships with her ‘mentee’ students over the years, and has indeed had her life changed as a result of this involvement. </p>

<p>I firmly believe that her genuine commitment to this program and these kids, demonstrated over pretty much her entire childhood, will make a decent statement about her commitment to ‘giving back’ even though she started just because she thought it would be fun and she loved theater. I’m not spending a whole lot of time worrying about the rich kids building houses in Costa Rica…I think her actions will speak for themselves.</p>

[SteveMA]

<p>Our daughter is going on a mission trip this summer, with our church, it’s going to cost us $150. Is that expensive enough to make an impact on her college resume :D.</p>

[SteveMA]

<p>opps, old thread brought up by a spammer…</p>

[Momzie]

<p>Actually, I don’t think the phenomenon is as new as you all make it out to me. I remember my parents forcing me to volunteer at the hospital as a Candystriper because they thought it would look good on my college applications. (This would have been the early 80’s). I was pretty introverted and hated having to interact with strangers. I also spent about 4 hours a day practicing the piano and won a couple of competitions. I resented having to volunteer because it took away from my practice time. Can’t remember if anyone actually asked me about my volunteer experiences on a college interview, but if they did, I imagine I probably said something surly. </p>

<p>For the record, most of the other candystripers were also there for the resume boost. The exception was a couple of girls who actually became nurses. And I remember hearing later that the program actually became even worse when they opened it up to boys a few years later – The boys were extremely careerist about the whole thing, and competed for titles like “hospital volunteer of the year” and it became even more obvious that it was about people’s resumes and not helping the actual old or sick people.</p>

[blossom]

<p>Momzie- thank you for your perspective. I was a “counselor” on one of these trips in the late 70’s, targeted to affluent HS kids (I was in college.) My guess is that a couple of the parents thought of it as a resume booster, most of them did it because they needed to get the kid out of dodge for the summer, either because the parents were in the middle of an acrimonious divorce, the kid had fallen in with a “bad crowd”, or what-not.</p>

<p>I stayed in touch with a couple of the nicer kids for the next few years- can’t think of a single one who ended up at an elite U. I think this was more of a remedial effort for kids whose HS transcripts were so-so and the parents had hopes for them to at least get in somewhere.</p>

<p>This is not news. The WSJ likes to make it news. Since at least the 1970’s enterprising companies have packaged these overseas experiences to parents who can pay for them. I think the only news is that people who can’t afford it now feel bad that they can’t give these manufactured opportunities to their kids.</p>