<p>When people list how many community service hours they have performed, do they mean the number on their report card? Is that an important factor in admissions? Do people look at this number?</p>
<p>My middle schooler’s school seems incredibly generous with hours. In 2 years my son has earned hours for the following: being in the stage crew for his own school’s school play, interviewing his own grandmother about life during World War 2, some kind of stream reclamation project they did on a field trip. I was really surprised that you could earn community service hours for these things! He’s also done a few things outside of school: setting up the polling place, handing out the “I voted” stickers on election day and standing in line for the elderly, walking dogs for a local rescue, and building a model boat to be a prop in the local high school’s play. These make more sense to me.</p>
<p>Altogether as a 7th grader, I’m pretty sure he’s already gotten credit for the 75 hours they need for high school graduation. Or rather, he would have gotten credit if he had remembered to turn the forms in. I had been thinking that it didn’t really matter. That he’ll get more hours next year and there’s no danger of him not making the cut off, so if he didn’t turn it in I ignored it.</p>
<p>Now, I’m wondering though. Is the total important? Should I be on top of him more so that he gets every hour he’s entitled to? </p>
<p>Also, will colleges expect him to explain those hours? I imagine that if he keeps up with the election day program, and stage crew, he’ll list those as extracurriculars, but will they expect a tally or something? If I don’t list the silly little jobs, will they assume he spent more hours on the election day thing than he really did? Is it dishonest if he doesn’t correct that assumption? Somehow writing “I talked to my own Grandma” as an extracurricular doesn’t seem particularly impressive.</p>
<p>At least in my district, high school hours don’t begin until the day after middle school promotion. I don’t think these hours in middle school will count.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Your son is in middle school. Please calm down about the college process and return when he’s at least completed his freshman year of high school. It’s way too early to be worrying about all of this.</p></li>
<li><p>Those hours sound ridiculously overstated, especially the first bunch of them.</p></li>
<li><p>Colleges don’t look at and don’t care about anything from middle school.</p></li>
<li><p>The number of community service hours is largely irrelevant. It’s better to demonstrate a continued commitment to a particular project or cause than to rack up a bunch of arbitrary hours that may not actually involve making an impact on your community. I didn’t even include a number of community service hours on my application; I just discussed my long-term community service involvement. It worked well.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes. Just saying you’ve completed a certain number of hours of community service means nothing to colleges. On the contrary, I’d argue that it demonstrates that you’re just doing it to increase your total number of hours and don’t really care about the projects, organizations, and causes you’re contributing to.</p></li>
<li><p>In filling out the EC portion of the application and in including any additional information, I would not discuss any one-off community service projects (or anything that isn’t community service, like speaking with your family).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The bottom line is that your son’s school is recording a useless and arbitrary number and it’s way too early for you to be worrying about all of this. The whole application process may be different by the time your son actually applies. Let him enjoy his life for a few more years.</p>
<p>Nope, they definitely count. There’s a lot of pressure on kids to finish them before high school because they say that high schoolers are too busy. I find that kind of sad because I’d like to think of community service as a family priority for us.</p>
<p>Not going to fly with college admissions. If you haven’t found the time for community service in high school, they don’t care at all that you did it in middle school. While community service isn’t required and doesn’t have to be a priority for everyone, those who haven’t done any in high school are probably at a disadvantage unless their ECs are spectacular for some other reason.</p>
<p>And high schoolers have plenty of time for community service everywhere else. There’s plenty of people around this site alone who have taken full loads of APs or done the IB Diploma and still found time to make a strong commitment to doing community service.</p>
<p>To be perfectly clear, I’m not asking “should I force my child to do community service?” I’m asking “for community service he’s already doing, whether because it’s a required part of his school day, related to an assignment, or part of an extracurricular that he chose, should I remind him to turn in the forms”. While I do worry about overscheduling my kid, I don’t think that the 20 seconds it takes to remove a form from his backpack and hand it to his homeroom teacher will ruin his childhood. </p>
<p>I do agree that they are ridiculous. That’s why I called the post what I called it. Who gives community service hours for talking to Grandma or being part of the school play? However, I should note that there’s not note on the report card or transcript about what they did, or what grade. So unless he explained “these hours were from middle school” there’d be no way for them to know.</p>
<p>It’s good to know that it doesn’t matter. I’ll keep not worrying when the same form goes back and forth in the backpack for weeks on end.</p>
<p>Years ago, my state instituted a community-service requirement for high school graduation. Then–I guess as a way of compensating for the possibility that some low-income kids might have trouble getting transportation to and from volunteer opportunities, or might have trouble fitting in community service around the jobs they need to have to help their families make ends meet, or whatever–schools began creating in-school opportunities for students to fulfill their community-service obligation. That spread to middle schools, so that now the highly privileged kids in my neighborhood enter high school all having fulfilled their community-service obligation on the basis of inflated hours for bogus service performed in middle school.</p>
<p>This means they have one less box to think about checking for high school graduation. What does it mean for college admissions? Not a damn thing. The activities they did in middle school are of no interest to colleges. The number of community service hours they tally for themselves is, likewise, of no interest to colleges.</p>
<p>A smallish fraction of American colleges and universities–the selective ones, which happen to be the ones that draw all the attention on College Confidential–care about applicants’ extracurricular activities. But most of the nearly 4000 colleges and universities in the country don’t give a rodent’s behind about them. Among the colleges that do care about extracurricular activities, mostly they think that community service can be a valuable and constructive use of a student’s time. This happens also to be the way they feel about Model UN, robotics, competitive Irish step dancing, being on the basketball team, playing the cello, and working for pay, among other things. In other words, as others have said, community service can be a useful part of an application to selective colleges if a student can demonstrate initiative or personal growth or dedication to a cause on the basis of his community service. If not, then it isn’t. Just like being on the basketball team. If playing basketball allows you to show dedication, teamwork, etc., then it’s helpful. If not, then it isn’t.</p>
<p>I don’t want to demean community service. It’s a wonderful thing when it is performed sincerely in an attempt to benefit others. And it can be a superb extracurricular activity. But the mere tally of a kid’s hours has basically nothing to do with college admissions.</p>
<p>My son applied to some fairly selective colleges. I don’t recall there being anything official on community service hours and EC hours. It seems like all was self-reported.</p>
<p>You got what I’m asking. Does anyone look at that line that says how many hours of CS they have. It sounds like they don’t so I’ll go back to not caring if he turns in the forms or not.</p>
<p>Admission to my kids’ high school NHS chapter required documentation of community service - had to put down hours and have it signed/verified by someone from the alleged organization. However, I don’t know if other HS NHS chapters require this, and the bigger question if being a part of National Honor Society matters in college admission.</p>
<p>My kids joined NHS because it’s something their friends did and their chapter actually did some useful things (at times) and it was part of their school’s culture for good students. They had plenty of community service hours completed before they even knew it would be required for anything.</p>
<p>Community service is not a graduation requirement here.</p>
<p>CuriousJane - your original question was “When people list how many community service hours they have performed, do they mean the number on their report card?”</p>
<p>Please remember that not every school district is just like yours; there are plenty (I would hazard a guess to say the majority) of states and / or schools where community service is not even remotely required. Colleges know this - so they aren’t going to be impressed by community service hours qua hours - because they know that some areas promote it, some require / mandate it, and others just don’t address the topic one way or the other. So, there is no universal “report card” standard for that reason.</p>
<p>At the broader level - community service is worthwhile in and of itself, especially if it relates to or promotes a particular interest for a given student. But if not, then if not. My son volunteered at several organizations that have nothing to do with his academic interests - they were just fun and interesting to him at a personal level. That’s all it needs to be. My daughter parlayed a volunteer position into a paying job that was of a lot of interest to her adcom (I know this for sure, because it was mentioned in the newsletter welcoming the class of 2015 that they had a “XXX” in the class). But it was the unusualness / relative specialness of this endeavor, not the volunteer nature.</p>
<p>Our NHS required 50 hours community service per year. For IB students, they could “double dip” one year from the community service component of IB CAS (150 hours, spit between Creativity, Action, Service). </p>
<p>Getting the paperwork organized is good practice for other reasons besides college apps, especially if the kid has a tendency to be scattered. Trust me, there is a mountain of paperwork in hs (if doing rigorous academics) and during college app season.</p>
<p>The common app does not specifically ask about community service. Most students will list significant CS in the “Extracurricular” section. Students are asked to “Please list your principal extracurricular, volunteer, and work activities in their order of importance to you…Use the space available to provide details of your activities and accomplishments (specific events, varsity letter, musical instrument, employer, etc.).” They are also asked to list the grades , approximate number of hours per week and weeks per year they participated in these activities. There is no place for middle school activities.</p>
<p>Listing any number of “Community Service” hours as an activity with no further breakdown would be unlikely to help an applicant.</p>
<p>My DC has done somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-700 hours of community service so far, but he’s only planning to list the volunteer jobs he did at two specific organizations, and those only because they were good experiences from which he learned quite a bit. His school has no idea what he’s done in terms of CS.</p>
<p>I’d advise your son to concentrate on the volunteer activities that mean something to him. Racking up hours in and of itself won’t impress anyone, but trying out different opportunities now could be a good way for him to figure out what kinds of volunteer jobs he might like to pursue in high school.</p>
<p>Bottom line: I wouldn’t worry about having him fill out the forms unless you don’t think he’ll want to do the required hours when he gets to high school.</p>
<p>I know a college president. He says schools pretty much ignore it unless it is completely missing or something hugely significant. The garden variety stuff neither enhances or detracts from an applicant.</p>
<p>Another to say that middle school activities and awards are not on the high school transcript,and so not on the application for colleges.</p>
<p>For example many students on CC were in CTY and took the SAT as 6th or 7th graders. That information is extraneous for a college application because the result of that experience is obvious.</p>
<p>Re community service. High schools in the area do require hours for graduation, however an activity in which you directly benefit, such as ; rehearsing for a school play or running a car wash to benefit your sports team, or interviewing a relative for a class project for which you receive a grade, you don’t count hours for these things.</p>
<p>Both my kids participated in volunteer work at the zoo, and the zoo kept track of the hours for them. Oldest had over 2000 hrs by the time she graduated, and her supervisor was her non teacher reference for her college applications. She didn’t do it for the hours though, she would have done it anyway. They both would have & I am sure that came through on their applications.</p>
<p>Our school district requires XX hours of community service for HS graduation. Students can begin to accumulate them in middle school. The program is designed to make it very easy to meet the minimum requirement and it is entirely possible to complete with only school-based activities. Many students graduate with more than the minimum (if they remember to file the paperwork) and those that complete more than some pretty huge number receive recognition and a special merit certificate at graduation. The students in that last category are the ones whose community service is likely to draw notice from colleges and universities that care about it.</p>
<p>Students who have significant community service should look at colleges/universities that participate in the Bonner Scholars programs. For some of those students, there is significant merit money available.</p>
<p>My younger daughter must be the only kid in the history of our local middle school to graduate without the community service requirement box checked as “met.” She was out sick A LOT and missed the all-important school carnival (or something) that the 8th graders, as a group, run for the school and all of them get credit for it. Had she brought in more cans for a food drive, she might have made up the difference…</p>