봉사활동의 기원과 중요성에 대한 다소 형식적인 내용이지만, 봉사활동에 대한 굉장한 추천서가 있으면 좋다는 조언엔 저도 동의합니다!!! 하지만 제 사견은 사회봉사(public service)와 관련된 훅(HOOK) 또는 전공이 아니라면 지역사회에 대한 배려, 나눔, 존중 등을 보여줄 수 있는 수준이면 충분하다는 겁니다^^ 사회봉사(public service)와 관련된 훅(HOOK) 또는 전공도 아닌데 봉사활동에 많은 시간을 할애해 성적에 영향을 미치거나 자신의 관심사(훅, 전공, 장기적 목표 등)에 대한 호기심, 남다른 노력, 차별화된 발상 등을 보여주는데 소홀하면 절대 안 된다는 거죠!!
How much do college admissions like community service when reading an application?
Here is my simplistic view of college admissions in the US.
Being a high-school student in the US, compared to other countries in the world, is easy, very easy. If you want, you can cruise with NO Honors and AP classes and take all As with marginal effort. So, the top colleges said: what the heck? How are we going to distinguish the students if all have As? And then Honors and AP classes came about. But then, if you spend all your day just studying, you can do pretty well even with those, so the college admissions then said: we need more!! What about sports? What about extracurricular? So, we arrived in today’s predicament where in one hand high schools are afraid to make the curriculum more challenging (because most kids are really not prepared), but top schools are seeing far more applicants than ever before.
So back to your question. How do schools view community services?
Colleges know very well that most students simply try to meet the “requirement” of being seen busy outside of school. So, yes, everyone volunteers in the hospital, the soup kitchen, their church, whatever it takes. But filling (meaningless) volunteer hours was never the goal. The goal is to demonstrate that you have a balanced life that includes: studying (and doing well), sports (being a captain is what really counts), and extracurricular. So ask yourself: with your community service (or whatever you do outside of school), are you just “billing community time” or are you actually making an impact in your community? Everything you do counts, but it counts even more if you are actually having a measurable impact (which can be verified by an amazing recommendation letter.)
