Opening doors through community service

by Nancy Griesemer

This is the first of a series of 3 articles on community service.

Incorporating community service into your life is incredibly rewarding and is almost always habit-forming. In fact, it often opens doors for life.

As you consider volunteer options, look for opportunities that fit you—your interests and skills. You don’t have to travel across the world or pay fees to be an effective volunteer. Some of the most engaging community service may be found right in your own backyard and costs nothing but your time and caring.

And the time commitment is entirely up to you. You can be deeply involved in a one-time event or you can sign up for a couple of hours each week. It really doesn’t matter.

Yes, community service pays off in many different ways. By sharing your time and talent with others, you most certainly will:

• Do some good. Volunteers have the opportunity to make a difference—change lives, support a cause, or improve the world around us.

• Discover a passion. Figuring out what you really love to do and channeling it into something productive is the surest road to happiness. And what better way is there to discover passion than through service to others?

• Test-drive careers. If you’re thinking about medicine, teaching, or even large animal husbandry, volunteer in a clinic, a school or on a farm. Community service provides hands-on experience and opportunities to explore different career paths. 

• Polish job-readiness skills. Being dependable, on time, and responsible not only makes you a great volunteer but also prepares you for entering the world of work. In addition, you can develop communication, organization, and invaluable “people” skills, all of which make you incredibly employable.
  
• Learn to collaborate. At its core, volunteerism is about teamwork. The ability to collaborate on a shared goal is an essential element of community service, whether it’s participating on a construction crew for Habitat for Humanity or fundraising for the American Cancer Society. And along the way, you may learn how to develop a business plan, schedule activities, and assign tasks—all valued skills for prospective business majors.

• Expand your network. Volunteering is a great way to make new friends and build solid connections to businesses, schools, or other community-based organizations. These are the kinds of relationships that tend to grow and blossom, particularly if you find yourself working in a team or supporting a cause.

• Get a recommendation: A byproduct of the volunteer experience can be a strong personal recommendation for college, scholarships, or future employment. While teachers and counselors can speak to academic and school-based accomplishments, some of your best character references will come from among supervisors and co-workers in organizations to which you contributed volunteer hours.

• Challenge your comfort zone. If life as a high school student has become a little boring and predictable, try volunteering in a totally unfamiliar part of your community or serving a population with which you don’t ordinarily interact. Expose yourself to new ideas, challenges and situations that will help you grow as a person.

• Enhance scholarship prospects. Although service to others should be its own reward, there’s no question that colleges, foundations, and businesses are willing to acknowledge service by awarding very generous scholarships. Winners of these kinds of honors typically begin early and dedicate significant hours throughout high school.

• Build leadership skills. As a volunteer, you may be presented with opportunities to build supervisory, management, or decision-making skills as a team leader or project organizer. You might even get the opportunity to explore your entrepreneurial side. These are talents that colleges, scholarship organizations, and employers value highly.

• Receive academic credit. If your school offers service-learning as part of the curriculum, you could be eligible for academic or extra credit if you volunteer your time or get involved in a community-based project. In fact, high schools are increasingly seeing the benefits accrued by students engaged in various kinds of ‘experiential learning’ opportunities and are moving to make them required for graduation.
  
• Upgrade college portfolio. Colleges want to see that you’ve done something more with your summer than texting or posting pictures on Instagram. Community service provides strong evidence of character, commitment, and motivation—all of which are pluses in college admissions.

• Discover an essay. The best college essays flow from personal experience. In fact, essay questions often ask about significant achievements, events, or people—all of which may be found by volunteering.

• Learn something. You learn by doing. And if you’re lucky, you may even be offered specific skills training you can take with you long after the event or project is completed.

• Be a role model. As a volunteer, you set an important example for your friends, family and community. When you step up, others will follow.
  
• Do some good. This cannot be overstated.

So get involved. You really will make a world of difference for yourself and others!

Students vote ‘no confidence’ in college admissions

by Nancy Griesemer

More than a simple distraction or a salacious news story featuring lots of celebs, the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal is definitely having an impact on the way students view the admissions process. In high schools across the country, they are voting ‘no confidence’ in colleges and the college admissions process.

According to a recent Kaplan survey of over 300 “aspiring” college students polled over email, 57% say they are concerned they won’t be treated fairly in the admissions process. Specifically, they believe their spot at a top college might be given to a less qualified applicant because of a personal connection to the institution.

In fact, nearly a quarter of these students claims they know someone they think is less qualified than they are, but who received “preferential treatment” in admissions because of family wealth or connections.

For those who have somehow been shielded from the daily tabloid-style updates on who is going to which jail, the Varsity Blues scandal involved a handful of very wealthy families with enough disposable income to cheat their way into elite colleges by manipulating applications, fixing text scores and otherwise using influence to ensure admission for their children.

And the story clearly hit a nerve, as what students applying to highly-selective schools thought they knew turned into fact—some families of privilege exercise that privilege to obtain positive admissions outcomes.

One student who planned to apply to only “top” colleges explained in his survey response, “I know numerous people that have connections to my top school, whereas I do not. I am especially concerned because I have a greater SAT score than them [sic], but they will have an upper hand and be admitted.”

Another student was more circumspect and remarked, “In light of the admission scandals, colleges will be more attentive and aware of these types of schemes. Also, considering a number of the parents who were caught and punished, I don’t believe that this will be a large problem in the future.”

The second student may be right.

In a separate Kaplan survey of 322 top colleges and universities (as defined by USNWR), admissions reps suggest that the corrupt practices exposed in the scandal are relatively rare. Less than a quarter (24%) describes the activities as common.

And only 11% say they were ever pressured to accept an applicant who didn’t meet admissions requirements because of who that applicant was or to whom they were connected—a significant drop from the 25% who suggested they were pressured to do so in a Kaplan survey just five years ago.

Nevertheless, colleges are worried about perceptions—their image among students making the decision whether or not to apply. Of the group surveyed, 49% think the scandal may have done long-term harm to the public image of the college admission process, while 37% don’t think it has and 14% aren’t sure.

When asked how colleges can convince families that the admissions process is not “rigged” against them, admissions officers were “largely unable to provide any specific policy prescriptions, but the theme of transparency was mentioned often.”

While the call for transparency seems like a logical, albeit a little disingenuous, response to the scandal, not everyone is so sure how it can be achieved.

And so it wasn’t surprising that the issue of how to achieve greater transparency in admissions lurked just below the surface of many discussions taking place during the 2019 NACAC Conference, in Louisville.

At a session dedicated to the Varsity Blues scandal moderated by Jeffrey Selingo, a DC-based journalist currently with The Atlantic, panelists wrestled with the idea of transparency—whether transparency was possible or even a good idea—when at the end of the day college admissions “is actually not a fair system” (Sacha Thieme, Indiana University).

Tongue in cheek, Jim Jump, of St. Christopher’s School in Virginia, added, “I’m not sure we want people to know how the sausage is made.”

Although several panelists suggested that the complexity of admissions works against complete transparency, they agreed that colleges can and should do more to help the public understand how applicants are selected, especially in context of competing institutional goals and the very real financial pressures institutions face.

And the question was raised as to how to be transparent in a constantly evolving process, when even enrollment managers can’t predict what their processes will look like over time. Several panelists pointed out that applicant pools and other factors change each year rendering these processes anything but static.

“Mystery creates mistrust, and in the absence of a narrative, the public creates their own,” said Angel B. Pérez, vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College, in Connecticut.

And as a result, the public has created a narrative of a system rigged against the average college applicant.

Summing up the recent survey findings, Sam Prichard, Kaplan’s director of college prep programs, concludes, “Applicants deserve better.”