How important is volunteering?

Northstarmom
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:53:50 +0000

No, I’m not saying you need to be interested in community service. My point was that perhaps what your relative who’s a Dartmouth alum is true: Maybe people who go to Dartmouth “played the game” in high school and don’t care about ECs, community service, etc.

My experience, however, has been that people who get into Harvard did activities that they genuinely enjoyed and that were more than resume decoration. Otherwise, there’d be no reason for so many Harvard students to participate in community service at Phillips Brooks House Association and to participate in ECs. They don’t need to do those things to get into grad or professional schools. No one at Harvard is forcing them to do those things. Consequently, it seems fairly obvious that they are involved in such things because of genuine interest.

If they only had done ECs and community service o decorate their resumes so as to get a Harvard acceptance they wouldn’t have bothered to do such things in college.

My advice to you is to do things that you genuinely care about. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time. Why take your precious time to do things that you don’t care about when you probably could spend the same time doing things that you enjoy? If your goal is to get into top colleges, you’re more likely to get in by doing things you enjoy than by forcing yourself to do things that you don’t care about.