<p>In this context there’s no reason to distinguish between volunteer hours and hours spent doing any other EC. College applications won’t ask you for a number of “volunteer hours,” but the Common Application will ask you to list your ECs (up to ten) and estimate how many hours you spent on them per week and in what years, starting the summer before ninth grade. These don’t have to be “official” documented hours or anything; they’re just asking for an estimate. You wouldn’t list “volunteering” as one of your ECs, so there’s no reason to calculate a total number of volunteer hours. Each place you volunteered would be listed as a separate EC. “Volunteering at Place A” and “volunteering at Place B” are different ECs, unless they’re related and you can combine them somehow.</p>
<p>Middle school stuff doesn’t belong on your college applications unless you took high school or college classes (in which case they’ll show up on the high school transcript or official college transcript you’ll have to send) or did something really noteworthy. </p>