Even the most altruistic applicant wants to know how community service looks to colleges: would admissions officers prefer a summer of health care work in Africa, or three years of Sundays spent at the local senior citizen center? Would creating a charitable Web site impress more than campaigning for a local politician?
According to a new study, volunteering doesn’t necessarily add do-gooder gloss to an applicant’s file.
Do Something, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth volunteerism, surveyed 33 colleges and universities among U.S. News & World Report’s top 50. The admissions teams distinguished among the type and duration of service seen on college applications. Seventy percent of them, it turns out, were more impressed by long-term local grunt work than a summer of volunteer work abroad.
“I was a financial aid student, so when I read some of these folders, I think to myself, ‘My parents couldn’t have done that for me,’ ” Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions at Tufts, explains in an interview. “Just because you have the means to do something exotic doesn’t mean we can’t read through that if the experience isn’t reflected elsewhere in the student’s interests and experiences.”
For example, a prospective prelaw student who works for a political campaign — and writes about how the experience differed from what he had learned in Advanced Placement Comparative Government — demonstrates consistent involvement. But a student who clocks in sporadically at a nonprofit organization or takes a service trip abroad, and doesn’t back it up on the application with context, isn’t adding much to a résumé. An admissions officer may even go “hmph.”
Mr. Coffin says students often write about their worldly service, and “there’s a degree of homogeneity to the way people experience those trips.” He cites the file of one applicant last year who wrote movingly of caring for a blind woman. “She gave a vivid description of the woman’s look of joy when she fed her ice cream,” Mr. Coffin recalls. “She didn’t have to jet off in an airplane for that.”
That’s not to say eco-work in Costa Rica will count against you. “Those trips can be a terrific experience for those who have the option,” says Rose Martinelli, assistant vice president for enrollment management at the University of Chicago.
Bob Patterson, director of admission at Stanford, notes that not all students need to have done volunteer work. “Some applicants work 30 hours a week to support their families and don’t have the time to volunteer,” he says. “Others may just not be passionate about volunteering.”
But he warns about padding a résumé with what he calls “stealth activities.” Can he tell if a student is insincere about his volunteer involvement? Mr. Patterson responds without hesitation: “Absolutely.”
And now that volunteerism is required by many high schools and even states, perhaps the term itself should be reconsidered. In the Do Something survey, 75 percent of colleges professed not to be put off because a school requires service, but they frowned on students who described it as “mandatory” or “required.”
The three most appealing words were “commitment,” “leadership” and “passion.” Also lending credibility: “engaged,” “meaningful” and “transform.”
“Community service shouldn’t be about ticking off a box,” says Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, dean of admission and financial aid at Wesleyan University, whose team discussed how to deal with “de rigueur” volunteerism at a recent staff retreat. Of course, she says, community service benefits communities and promotes social change; the question for admissions offices is, what is the impact on students?
“What we’re looking at is, what is the student doing with his or her time?” Ms. Hargrave Meislahn says. “And part of that, we’d hope, is that they show some form of engagement toward the community at large. How has the student demonstrated a change in world view as a result of that work? What kind of impact has it had on the student and is there evidence of that in the file?” (Like in a good essay!)
Admissions officers at Duke like to think of a prospective student in terms of both academic and personal qualities. “Once we’re comfortable with a student’s academic credentials,” says Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions, “we want someone who will be a constructive, rather than a disruptive, member of our community: socially, culturally and interpersonally.” In short, a good person. The kind you — or any university — would want to have around.
By PAMELA PAUL
New York Times
Published: January 7, 2011
