Many believe that performing community service is a prerequisite to earning admission to highly selective colleges. Indeed, these parents and students think applicants would exponentially increase their odds of admission to highly selective colleges if they could showcase charitable acts on their applications. But are these parents and students right, or are they misguided?

Misconceptions About the Importance of Charity in College Admissions

First, it’s essential to understand the origin of this thesis about the importance of performing community service to earn admission to highly selective universities. 

It stems from parents in line at the grocery store bragging about how their children build houses in West African villages. It stems from private college counselors who tout the importance of community service in admission within press articles and misattribute a student’s rejection to their failure to highlight their charitable work in their community.

Case in point? In a New York Times piece a few years back by Janet Morrissey on students seeking private college counseling, one such college counselor said of a student denied admission to several schools, “He came across as a jerk…He didn’t mention all of the charitable acts he had done for his community.”

But on the contrary, mentioning what charitable acts students have done in their communities within essays typically risks positioning students as jerks. Students should, after all, wish to serve their communities for the sake of serving their communities — not to score points in elite college admissions.

Admissions officers can quickly gauge when students are getting involved in community service because they think it will improve their cases for admission. And it will almost always backfire on these students.

If Community Service is the Angle, It Must Be Interesting

It’s not as though community service can’t be a student’s angle to optimize their case for admission, but it has to be more specific than community service. And the type of community service matters too.

Building homes in West African villages is beautiful for humanity, but it’s not helpful in elite college admissions. It’s cliché since many applicants go to faraway lands to impress admissions officers in 2023, just as they did in 1993. It also flaunts privilege since many students lack the means to perform charitable work in West Africa.

As importantly, if community service is a student’s angle, several extracurricular activities need to relate to the same premise within the broader realm of community service. They can’t build houses in West Africa, run blood drives in Ohio, and organize Relay for Life. That’s all over the place!

If they want to change how we collect blood, several of their activities should relate to donating blood and activism tied to breaking down barriers for potential blood donors. In short, the community service hook needs to be more singularly focused.

Is the National Charity League Good for College Admissions?

Don’t get us wrong — volunteering with the National Charity League is certainly a reputable activity that makes the world a better place. But from an admissions standpoint, it’s tantamount to having a pulse. When anyone can join and the barrier to entry is attending a meeting or two, admissions officers will see through this commitment and move on to the applicants who have actually invested real time and energy in pursuit of their singular hook.

When families ask us about NCL, we tell them exactly what we relate about the National Honor Society (NHS) — that anyone can join, and using up valuable real estate in your activities and honors section is simply a waste. However, if you’d like to volunteer with NCL on your own time and leave it out of your application, that’s your prerogative.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance Zeroing in on a Singular Hook

If you’re interested in Ivy Coach’s help zeroing in on how you can best position your extracurricular activities to earn admission to elite universities, fill out our free consultation form, and we’ll be in touch.