Volunteer service: apply now or not?

Parents Forum
1

<p>My son is considering a year of volunteer service before applying for some of the “Public Ivies,” maybe UNC or William & Mary. Nothing fancy in the volunteer service, probably working with low-income adults or disaster relief. My question is: Should he apply this season and ask to be deferred if he gets in, or wait and apply a year from now?</p>

<p>Also, the complications:</p>

<p>What do you do about health insurance coverage for that year? My policy only covers him as long as he’s a full-time student.</p>

<p>He’s a National Merit Semifinalist. If he wins one of the national scholarships (99+ percentile selection index), will they let him defer taking it for a year?</p>

<p>Is it better to have a known high school class rank as of graduation (which will be true if he waits a year), or to have junior class rankings (top 14%) with an upward trend – but no final guarantee of what his ranking will be? He’s 3.8 unweighted, but not at a strong school.</p>

<p>Is it better if he’s “never been rejected” when he applies, with that year of volunteer service hopefully making him look more attractive to the schools next year? Or is it better that he show interest by applying this year?</p>

<p>SmallTowner</p>

2

<p>If he is only at the consideration stage, he definitely should go ahead and apply to the schools that he is interested in now.
Our health insurance covers kids till 24 if we are still mostly supporting them. However when my daughter did Americorps, their insurance plan covered her as well.
I don’t know about the NMS scholarship.
I will say that a year of service looks very good to schools and to scholarship administrators if it is something that he truly wants to do.</p>

3

<p>COBRA if it pertains to your situation would cover your son. Otherwise ask if you can get some sort of plan. If your son has the stats to get into college now, it would just be nice to have the whole thing in the bag rather than another thing to do next year. It really does go by quickly.</p>