By Camille Roney
Volunteer experience has become a basic requirement for many schools
and almost every scholarship. But volunteering is so much more than
something your student does in order to include it on an application.
It's a chance to explore interests beyond academics, contribute to
causes they're passionate about, and gain leadership skills.
Not
all volunteer opportunities are weighted the same by admission
committees. Let me walk you through how your student can earn quality
volunteer hours, even while juggling a full course load.
What Admission Committees Look For
Generally
speaking, review committees use volunteer experience as an indicator of
how well-rounded a student is. When it comes to scholarships, they want
to support students who have already served their community in a
meaningful way. For undergraduate programs, schools tend to look for
those who can contribute to the college’s culture at large and blossom
into a stand-out member of the campus community.
In contrast,
professional degrees such as medical school or masters and Ph.D.
programs may explicitly require volunteer experience that directly ties
to their industry.
Regardless, the number of hours volunteered is
extremely important. A student with hundreds of volunteer hours and a
leadership role in one organization speaks directly to their values and
dedication to a specific cause much more than a student who volunteered
for a single day at a community event.
A general guide is to aim
for 10–15 volunteer hours per month for students during the school year,
and as much as possible over the summer.
Quality Matters
As
hinted above, what students are actually doing while volunteering also
plays a significant role when reviewing student applications. Let’s
consider a pre-health student seeking to volunteer at a hospital in
order to gain experience in healthcare. The volunteer coordinator may
place them at the hospital’s gift shop or at the front desk directing
incoming calls. Although these roles certainly benefit the hospital,
they don’t provide the student with many opportunities to interact
directly with patients or other healthcare staff. In this case, the
student may be better off volunteering at an assisted living center or
hospice to gain higher quality experience.
How to Volunteer Without Sacrificing GPA
It
gets even more complicated when you factor in that students are
expected to be accomplishing this while maintaining peak performance in
the classroom. For many students, competitive grades come at the cost of
their lives outside of school, and the reverse is just as true.
Yet
finding a balance between one’s most significant responsibilities (such
as pursuing an education) and their personal life is an ongoing
juggling act that doesn’t end with high school. In fact, many of us
parents have recently picked up a book aimed at helping us find the
elusive "work-life balance" we all seem to be chasing.
With the
desire to set your student up for sustainable success, I welcome you to
consider that all of us are already "failing" in one facet of life at
the expense of excelling in another.
For instance, your student
has likely had at least one productive study session in part because
they chose not to spend that time doing something less important to
them, such as perfecting their chocolate chip cookie recipe or learning
how to ride a unicycle. They decided (consciously or not) what was
important to them and acted accordingly.
So let me introduce you to a concept I like to call...
Value-Based Time Blocking
The
idea is that their calendar should be a direct reflection of their
personal values, not necessarily measured in time but by the quality of
that time spent. Using what actually matters to them at their core as a
compass allows them to discern what is or isn't a meaningful use of
their time.
This practice welcomes students to reflect on how
present they are at any given moment. Bringing ourselves back into the
experience that is right in front of us increases both productivity and
the pleasure we gain by participating.
The outcome may be that
they spend less time studying because their actions are more
productively focused, freeing up time either to take on more tasks or to
reduce anxiety around the workload they have in front of them. For
example, Value-Based Time Blocking encourages students to consider
whether they really need to be studying for five hours after class, or
if they could accomplish the same desired outcome in half the time by
being more efficient.
And let me remind you that students don’t
have to continuously participate in every activity for a set amount of
time regardless of what else is going on in their lives. Many students
accomplish all of their volunteering during summer breaks or on long
weekends. Some can double-up to accomplish multiple goals at the same
time, perhaps by volunteering under the supervision of their mentors.
In
essence, students don’t necessarily have to do "everything" all at the
same time. There's enough time in a semester to accomplish what really
matters, and dedicated students use that time purposefully.
Additional Benefits of Volunteering
As
if giving one’s most precious resource — time — wasn’t enough, students
gain so much more than just something to add to their resumes. The
experiences they have while volunteering makes for fantastic content for
personal statements and scholarship applications, helping theirs stand
out to the review committees.
Volunteering is also a common way
for students to find incredible mentors. These professionals in their
field can provide invaluable guidance and industry-specific insights,
and they may also write letters of recommendation. The power of an
incredible referral from a professional that speaks directly to your
student’s unique strengths and skill set cannot be overstated.
Their Next Steps
Once
they're ready to take on volunteering, the goal is to find or create
opportunities that genuinely interest them, introduce them to new
experiences, and can be accomplished without coming at the expense of
what truly matters to them. If a volunteer commitment starts to impact
performance in another important area of their life, it’s perfectly fine
to walk away and try something else. Whether an opportunity is directly
related to their academics or career goals is just a welcome bonus!
Balancing
high academic performance with volunteering, along with anything else
of great significance, doesn’t happen by accident. It is possible to "do
all the things," as many competitive schools expect of their students,
but this is only the outcome of intentional planning, deep personal
investigation, dropping what no longer serves them, and pivoting as
necessary.
