<p>Recently, I’ve heard about many CA high schools (public as well as private ones) requiring 100+ hours of community service in order to get high school diploma. There is also a rumor that not any kind of volounteering counts - you should do it for some “pre-approved” organizations, preferrably, getting all your community service hours at one place.</p>
<p>The schools’ GC’s, they say, explain such requirements by “UC requirements” … or “recomendations” or “preferrance” by adcoms … I couldn’t find any information on this matter on UC official web-site, except the questions on the UC application about EC’s and volounteering.</p>
<p>My daughter’s high school does not have such a requirement. Everybody there is overachieving in various ways - some spend all their time on getting all “A’s” for the hardest AP classes, some play sports, some practice their music instruments for many hours a day, as well as rehearse and perform with their bands, orchestras, ensembles at the recitals, competitions, tours … some do volounteer wherever they find it suitable. Most of the students do many differents things at once, nobody can do it all … And I never heard in our school about community service having any specific priority for UC adcoms over other EC’s. </p>
<p>So, I wonder, how many people out there, who recently get into high-ranked UC’s (such as USB, UCLA, UCSD …) without 100+ hours of volounteering? Who didn’t get into the school of their choice - in spite of their excellent GPA, SAT scores, EC’s - and suspects the lack of community service to be a reason? Where, in general, could I find more information on this matter?</p>