Is formal community service outside of school a must? Even just through formal programs at my school, I do around 100 hours a year, which isn’t much, but is definitely non-negligible. And although I hate doing activities just for the purposes of college, the research project I’m doing this summer will potentially help thousands of minority language speakers.
But that’s beside the point. The general idea I’ve been hearing here is that I should appear more focused on STEM stuff to show that I have a “spike”. I’m not sure why community service has to be done out of school but through a formal program for it to count towards college stuff (I’m not religious, so I don’t do service with a church, if that’s why it’s “odd” idk). I know a lot of people who have gotten into really prestigious schools (Stanford + Ivies) with the same or lower amount of service that I’ve done. Why is doing some sort of organized non-school, non-STEM service activity key to “tie together”?
I do agree with you that non-CS/STEM items will be important for applications, but to be fair, from the beginning everyone has been telling me to omit or undercover non-“spikey” activities that I find meaningful (spanish, math, non-CS STEM, service orgs, etc.). I want to minor in history, after all. What I’m aiming for is balance. I’m not a one-dimensional person, but I’ll emphasize my most important qualities/talents on my apps to show adcoms why I’d contribute to their school. To solely show CS or even just STEM stuff would be to misrepresent myself, which I do not plan on doing.