by John Kultgen, Senior Associate Editor, DoSomething.org
December 29, 2011
We’ve all been there. You’re totally stressed about your college application. Was my essay long enough? Should I take the SAT tests again?
Well there’s one aspect of applications we can help you relax about: volunteer experience.
You don’t have to travel to some foreign country and live in a remote village to impress the college of your dreams. DoSomething.org conducted a study in partnership with FastWeb (the leading source of college scholarship information) and our longtime partner, JPMorganChase to ask colleges what they want to see on an application. The full survey is available ~1@BODYURL[id=114kcurl435]@
~1@BODYIMAGE[id=114kcfl810&align=center]@
Some things we learned:
• 70 percent of admissions officers prefer that you’re consistently involved with one issue instead of many issues. So don’t be in every volunteer club when you could be the superstar president of one or two of them.
• Fundraising can be just as impressive as being on-the-ground working. Almost half of the colleges surveyed said raising $100,000 showed great initiative.
• 95.8 percent of admissions officers value a student who took a gap year and did a service project. This doesn’t mean that you travel the world to "find yourself," but that you spend all year helping others in some way.
Freaking out? Don’t. There’s still time in your high school career to get involved:
• Start a ~1@BODYURL[id=114kcurl432]@ and we’ll send you resources and support all year long.
• Choose a ~1@BODYURL[id=114kcurl433]@ to get active with.
• Browse our ~1@BODYURL[id=114kcurl434]@ that will help you make impact in a fun way.
View the entire survey results from DoSomething.org ~1@BODYURL[id=114kcurl435]@
_______
Guest contributor John Kultgen is Senior Associate Editor at DoSomething.org.