However, too often community service is just a notch in the belt or a box to be ticked. Students do it, but most just put in the hours without actually accomplishing or learning much of anything.

Some families will pay thousands of dollars to do community service in far-away places. However, they could just as well serve needy folks within miles of their own homes.

The measure of one’s true contribution is not the number of hours or the miles traveled. But the impact the individual student makes on the community.

This is the potential of the programs at the YMCA. They help students perform needed services. But they also build the leadership potential within the students themselves to make a difference in the community.

The Y programs are “Teens Making a Difference” or the “Leaders Club“. Either way, students as young as 11 can start making a difference in their communities and also develop leadership skills.

Some of these programs may cost a few bucks. But not nearly as much as an air ticket to Costa Rica or Nepal. So be sure to check out the community service at the YMCA.

If you’re looking for more information about how to manage the college admissions process, check out the resources available at the Great College Roadmap.

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While it’s true that college campuses seem to be putting more emphasis on community service these days. It’s not crucial that each and every applicant amass hours and hours of volunteer hours.

In fact, a report called “Turning the Tide” from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education advocated a more genuine and sustained form of community service as an essential component for admission. This report was endorsed by deans of admissions from many of the country’s most selective colleges and universities.

However, in our view, it is not absolutely necessary that every student complete hundreds of hours of community service. As with so much else in the college admissions world, your community service contributions depend on all the other decisions you make as you prepare for admissions to the colleges of your choice.

Admissions for the most selective universities are ill-advised you to spread yourself too thinly. Perhaps you are a star athlete or a championship debater or first chair trumpet in a regional youth orchestra. If so, you are a very busy person trying to maintain your craft. You are practicing often, participating in competitions or concerts. As well as occupied with becoming truly great by strengthening your talents. It’s likely you don’t have much time for community service.

Maybe you do some volunteering around the edges. Or, you volunteer a few hours per year to maintain your membership in the National Honor Society. Or, you belong to a service club at your school in which you serve your school on occasion. But your focus is elsewhere.

University admissions personnel will admire your focus and your achievements. They will not expect you to be an acolyte of Mother Theresa and a star athlete, championship debater, or virtuoso trumpeter.

The Rules of Community Service

On the other hand, if you really enjoy community service, and you find joy in serving your community in one way or another. We heartily recommend that you continue to pursue those commitments. But here are a couple of rules about community service and the admissions process.

1. Don’t count hours: measure your impact. Your goal is not to spend more time making a difference. Instead, you want to make a measurable difference that others can see.
2. Focus your efforts on a single organization—or a single cause. Volunteering for short periods at a large number of organizations will dilute your efforts and reduce your impact.
3. Try not to focus on service that is far from home. You need not travel to Madagascar or Malaysia in order to find needy people or worthwhile causes. You will likely have more opportunities to have a measurable impact and create a sustained commitment if you stick close to home.
4. Get to know people who share your commitment. Connect with the leaders of the organization with which you volunteer.
5. Don’t forget the learning component of service learning. As you spend your valuable time helping others, spend time reading about the issues you are addressing. If you’re volunteering at a homeless shelter, read about the causes and proposed solutions for homelessness. Or, if you tutor in a school, learn about how poverty has a measurable impact on kids’ ability to get an education. And, if you volunteer at a library, learn about the trends in libraries today, and compare with the historical role of libraries in our community. In other words, remember that every service opportunity is related to serious social, economic, and political issues—and take the time to educate yourself.

How We Can Help

If you’re not sure whether you should pursue community service. Or, if you are looking for ways to increase your impact. You might consider setting up a consultation with one of our counselors. We advise our students—especially those aiming for the most selective colleges and universities—about how to develop priorities and manage their time so as to make themselves as attractive as possible to admissions officers. We can help you build a customized plan that will maximize your fun. As well as enhance your chances, and—most important—help you make your mark in your community.

Or you may want to consider our video courses on the admissions process. They are reasonably priced and a great way to educate yourself on how to get the most from your high school experience. Identify the best schools for you, and create winning applications.  

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As a response, many high schools have instituted community service requirements for graduation.  Similarly, one of the main attractions of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is its emphasis on community action through its CAS program (“Creativity, Action, Service).

Coincident with these trend is the rise of “voluntourism”, by which well-off adults travel to Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia to do “good works” in a poor community during their vacations.  These programs also build upon similar efforts organized by churches and other religious organizations.  This demand has created a significant niche of the international travel industry that caters to altruistic adventures.

To grossly oversimplify, the idea is for folks in wealthy countries like the United States to see how others live and to contribute in some way to the development of a less well-off community. From the standpoint of college admissions, these sorts of “voluntourism” programs have become increasingly common.  Many affluent families routinely send their kids off on some sort of community service adventure to work in an orphanage, dig latrines, or paint school buildings in poverty-stricken communities around the world.  Invariably, these experiences become fodder for college essays.

From the admissions standpoint, these pay-to-play experiences are so common–and so superficial–that their impact in the admissions process is negligible.  Given that so many kids write about such experiences, the resulting essays can even become a strike against the student.  I’ve heard admissions officers crack jokes about the insipid essays that emanate from these international volunteer experiencs.

To give you an idea of the essays I’ve seen kids write about such experiences, I offer the following made-up example (warning: I am exaggerating for effect…):

“My life changed when I spent two weeks digging ditches in Upper Slobovia last summer.  I never knew that people who were so poor, who ate bugs for dinner, and who used a tin can as a potty could be so happy and generous.  These unfortunate people taught me so much about life: especially, how lucky I am not to be one of them.”

Obviously, I’m not really a fan of these “voluntourism” programs.  I studied international relations in graduate school, and spent a good deal of my time thinking about poverty alleviation in developing countries.  I also have many very close friends who spent years of their lives doing “real” development work, living in hardship in places like Guyana, Malawi, and Laos, actually delivering well-developed, well-funded development aid.  And many of these friends will confide that they were never too sure that their efforts really amounted to much.  So how could a teen with a shovel actually do any real and lasting good during a two week drive-by trip to the Dominican Republic?

Actually, these teens could be doing do more harm than good.  A recent article published on Al-Jazeera America caught my eye.  It highlights the growing demand in the rich world for altruistic vacation opportunities.  Both in the teen and adult markets, scads of companies have cropped up to feed this demand, and more and more rich white folks are traveling to poor places where the dominant skin tones are several shades darker.

The overall tone of the article is fairly critical of “voluntourism” The author cites several egregious examples of voluntourism gone wrong in South Africa and Haiti and elsewhere.  However, the author does soften the critique a bit by saying that such volunteer experiences abroad can be improved through due diligence, better awareness, and a more realistic attitude on the part of the tourists that what they are doing can have negative as well as positive consequences for a community.

When asked by parents whether such volunteer opportunities for teens are really worth it, I tell them that they have become virtually worthless in the admissions process. The only people who can really go are those who can afford to fly to Timbuktu and back again.  Colleges might actually prefer to hear from applicants who have done something significant and important in their own local communities.  Certainly, such efforts may lack the “wow!” appeal of teaching English to kids in South Sudan, but what colleges want to see  is an activity that has a measurable impact–and not the experience that took place that even Google Maps cannot find.

To be fair, I have had a small handful of kids write excellent, reflective, and balanced essays on their time abroad as volunteers.  Generally, the best ones are written by kids who spend four or more weeks in a community, during which time they actually begin to see beyond the superficial level of what poverty means, and begin to connect with people in a more interesting and fundamental way.  Not all “voluntourism” is horrible.

But don’t latch on to such opportunities as the quick way into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.  These universities will be much more impressed your impact, your capacity for reflection, and your intellectual and personal curiosity much more than the stamps in your passport.

Great College Advice

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