Volunteering - do colleges care what kind?

[klmama]

I've read that for some scholarships and awards students have to have volunteered a certain number of hours someplace besides at church or at a business. In your experience, do the colleges themselves care where the kids volunteer? Just wondering if we need to look for other options.

[Skadi]

There was a study done by Princeton University a few years ago that found students who volunteered in organizations like Junior ROTC, 4-H, or the Future Farmers of America had a 65% reduced chance of gaining admittance to college (all other things being equal). Princeton used to have the PDF of the study available for download but it's either been moved to another web address or taken down...I'll let you know if I can dig it up again. The study clearly showed that certain types of volunteering or winning awards in certain fields actually worked against students because of bias on the part of admissions boards. Essentially, the study found that academia is less likely to accept the applications of rural, conservative, and religious white people. (As a disclaimer, aside from being white, I myself don't embody those characteristics. I'm just relating the study without an ulterior motive.) All volunteering is not judged equally, and I think it'd be folly to pretend otherwise.

 

You might want to investigate sites like Volunteer Match to find opportunities in your area. I would probably focus on free tutoring (who says tutoring younger siblings shouldn't count?), volunteering at the library, helping park and roadside clean-ups, serving at a homeless shelter, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, or helping out at senior centers or hospitals. Those kinds of activities are usually seen as more politically neutral.