Community Service & Schedule Rigorousness

SnowflakeVT
Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:32:23 +0000

So your question is how do employers look at how you got yourself through school in regards to credits/semester? And your other question is what counts as community service?

1) It depends on what kind of job and what type of major. Most employers care that you are connected to your subject matter deeply in a way that shows passion. If you are able to get great grades and show that, it may not matter as much whether you took 14 credits a semester or 6, however, 4 years of a bachelor degree is a lot less time than 8 years of a bachelor. The risk is that you don’t have a way to pay for it and give up after 4-5 years, or that it becomes too challenging to juggle your situation and you give up before completing an actual degree.

2) Community service is volunteer work that is non-paid and that benefits the community. The number of hours is not as important as the intent and the value of the service. If you volunteered 5-10 hours a week over the summer as a volunteer at the hospital and you eventually were asked to train other volunteers or started a program to recruit more volunteers, that is more important that just showing up and getting 5-10 hours on the clock.

It sounds like finances may be a problem for you if you are worried about dorm expenses. In reality, the best way to survive college without distractions is to be 100% committed, and one way to do that is to live in the environment that supports this focus, which is the dorm with all the study benefits nearby. If you can apply for financial aid, you should definitely look into this. If you have great grades and other hooks (minority, first one in your family to attend college, amazing athlete, etc.) then you may find that there are possible scholarships in addition to the financial aid that make paying for college a little easier, including room and board.