I’ve seen that paid college counselors are advising that students come up with a “passion project”. They make a video about their passion project (some kind of charitable endeavor) and try to raise money through social connections (usually their parents’ connections) for some established entity. They file to make their project into a 501(c)(3). They raise some amount of money, and arrange to present their project as a talk somewhere, maybe at their church, or school, or some local club that will give them a venue. And then put that on their application as their “passion project”.
I cannot help but feel that by now college admissions committees see this as what they are - an 11th grade, 11th hour attempt at an EC that will somehow distinguish the applicant and differentiate them from all the other good solid students with high scores and gpas who are applying, 20 or more of them, for a spot at a highly selective school. I’m wondering if anyone knows if this has by now become a turn-off, as cliche as the spring break mission trip to poor villages in Central America, leading to the essay regarding how it changed the student’s life, opened their eyes to true poverty, and now it has formed their career goal, which will somehow be used to help the poor.
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That’s actually old news. Everyone in admissions knows the next big must-have is research, where a high school junior magically becomes the lead author with a Nobel laureate mentor on a study like “Transformer-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning for Gravitational Lensing Reconstruction in Exoplanet Magnetosphere Detection.”
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Wait…I thought it was creating your own Non-Profit.
If you want to hear a funny thing about mission trips, you have to listen to Rick Clarks NPR broadcast about that. Perhaps @jym626 or @DramaMama2021 can link that. It’s beyond hilarious!
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However, TRUE passion projects are taken seriously. And usually aren’t based on a sudden interest in supporting a charity. We’re talking about something the kid has worked on for years that is truly a passion to them but maybe never had an audience. Building a car from scratch, taking care of feral cats, getting a ham radio or pilots license. All true passions.
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From what I have heard, yes, these are likely not paying off as much as these applicants are hoping.
I do think if you do actual meaningful, sustained volunteer work for existing charitable organizations, that is still valued. I think if you do self-directed projects that are a natural outgrowth of your activity and academic history, and which clearly could not have been done through existing organizations available to you, that is still valued. But if it looks like you are “creating” something just so you can shortcut the part of the process where you are spending long hours acquiring experience, participating as junior members on teams, and learning from more experienced leaders, all for the purpose of checking a box on your college applications . . . yes, I think that will likely result in less value being attributed to that sort of activity.
That said, I don’t know if kids are really routinely punished for this sort of stuff either. Like they have wasted some time and effort, and maybe have fooled themselves into thinking they successfully demonstrated something that has been left undemonstrated. But I am not sure many AOs will be inclined to actually view them more negatively. More just the absence of the positive they were hoping for.
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I feel like passion projects and starting one’s own non-profits are both old-news and out of favor in my version of wealthy-people land it is internships at real start-ups OR working old-school summer jobs like ice cream shops or camp counselors OR real (no pay-for-play) research with profs
Trips abroad went out 20 years ago here…
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I do feel like there has been an uptick in “start ups” recently.
And honestly, if you got an unrelated angel investor or VC to give you $1M+ in seed money, that’s sincerely impressive.
But it does sort of feel like kids are increasingly using it a little . . . let’s say prematurely.
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Oh yeah, I meant more working at a start-up, not making your own with your own funding. I haven’t seen that one yet personally… (not saying it doesn’t happen). I think it would be hard to show it wasn’t from connections..
I’ve only seen the claim to have created a start up a few times so far, but it feels to me like it might take off. We shall see!
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