When colleges are accepting students for admission, they often choose those ones who stick out for their extracurricular activities, participation in the community and more.
One of the biggest reasons for this is that the main goal of colleges is to create a student body made up of students who will likely have a positive impact in their school and the community around them.
Volunteering, one of the most common community involvement activities, is something that may spark colleges’ interest when they look at someone’s resume. Often, however, the students behind those resumes are ones who have lost sight of what they want to do in hopes of creating the ideal resume for the college they want to attend.
In modern day, getting into a top college has become such a top priority that many students have changed their way of thinking and their approach to life because of it.
According to the California Career Center, one of the top ways to get into the college of your choice is to “become involved in your school and community during all four years (of high school) and summer vacations.”
Although becoming involved in your community in your areas of interest may be helpful to the process, many fail to explain to students the fact that they shouldn’t be doing volunteer work just for the sake of their resume.
Ishan Puri, writer at the Huffington Post, states that “doing general volunteer work is almost never helpful for admission to the Top 100 colleges.”
However, that shouldn’t be the reason why you stop volunteering. Getting involved in the community has an incredible number of benefits, and here are just a few:
1. You stay physically healthy. A lot of volunteer work involves moving around and moving your body. And there is also a lot of volunteering that takes place in the outdoors. Not only do you get exercise, but you also get that breath of fresh air that you may have needed after sitting at school, home or at the office all day.
2. You can learn valuable job skills. Many organizations, businesses, camps, etc. have volunteer opportunities where you are working directly with employees. When you are working one-on-one with them and looking at how they work, not only do you directly learn about what they are doing, but you may also have the opportunity to learn skills that you can use later in your life, such as how to sell something.
3. You develop connections. When you’re volunteering, you’re often interacting with people, whether it’s the people the organization is involved with or those in the organization itself.
4. It can help out with stress. On top of the satisfaction that comes from helping others, getting the chance to go outside and get away from technology can provide a distraction from our daily work.
These are just a few of the many reasons why it’s important to get involved with the community more. This link not only has ideas for places to volunteer, but also specific organizations that you can get involved with:
https://www.moneycrashers.com/good-places-volunteer-opportunities-organizations.
lped encourage you to think about what volunteering really means to you and that you start getting involved with the community more.
For our monthly challenge, upload your favorite type of volunteer work to participate in with the tag #CupertinoCourier. I can’t wait to see what you say. Until next month!
Shivani Gupta is a junior at Monta Vista High School. Meeting new people is one of her favorite things to do, and she feels lucky to have gotten the chance to live in a place where that is always possible.
