College Admissions and Volunteer Work

We have previously discussed the impact volunteer work and civic engagement can have on the admissions process for applicants who have impressive levels of activity. Survey work consistently points to colleges valuing these activities and favoring applicants who demonstrate an interest in volunteer work. Some of the more interesting survey results of the past few years mention 71% of admissions officers considering volunteer work to be a significant factor in their decision process, 43% of admissions officers mentioning long term volunteer work as more important than applicant GPA and 61% of private school admissions officers highlighting community service levels as the tiebreaker between equally qualified candidates.

In our previous article we discussed the levels of volunteer work that are more likely to impress colleges, highlighting the Presidential Volunteer Service Awards which start at 50 hours per year for teens (11-15) and 100 hours for young adults (16-25).

With an increasing number of students focused on volunteer work and civic engagement we thought it might sense to highlight the schools that we believe care the most about it in their admissions process. From our standpoint, students who demonstrate a solid long-term commitment to volunteer work are likely to be advantaged with these schools while those that do not will potentially face incremental headwinds in the admissions process.

One way we determine the schools that care a bit more about volunteer work is by examining the Common Data Set for the top fifty colleges and universities as ranked by U.S. News. Better known than it used to be, the Common Data Set (CDS) is a thirty plus page collection of standardized questions related to individual school’s admissions process, financial aid process, mix of majors and demographics. Although the Common Data Set is only as accurate as the colleges completing the forms and often not as transparent as one might like, we believe it is helpful when trying to identify the schools that genuinely value volunteer work in their admissions process.

Of specific interest to us is that only three of the schools out of the one hundred that we looked at mentioned volunteer work as ‘very important’ in their CDS results, making those that chose to highlight volunteer work in this fashion particularly interesting. The three schools that rated volunteer work as ‘very important’ were Carnegie Mellon, Washington University at St. Louis and UC Irvine. Among the hundred schools we looked at, a still fairly concentrated group of twenty-five schools mentioned volunteering as ‘important’ in their admissions decision process. The twenty-five schools were Amherst, Boston College, Bucknell, Dickinson, Emory, Franklin and Marshall, Haverford, Lehigh, Mount Holyoke, Notre Dame, Occidental, Ohio State, Pitzer, Sewanee, Skidmore, Union, UC Davis, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, University of Florida, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Washington, Vassar and Williams College.

Another group of schools likely to value volunteer work and civic engagement are schools that include service in their curriculum. Schools who do not comment on volunteer work as being ’important’ or ‘very important’ in the CDS commentary regarding their admissions process but value it enough to make it part of their curriculum are schools like American University, Berea, Brown, Duke, Elon, Georgetown, Northeastern and Tulane. We suspect that a passion for volunteering will help in their admissions process as well.

In summary, we believe that students who demonstrate an interest or passion for volunteer work have a genuine advantage in the admissions process compared to those who are less involved. Although this may not be an exhaustive list, we also think the benefit of volunteer work is greatest at the schools mentioned in this article. For students looking to maximize the impact of their volunteer efforts, we recommend considering these schools. While volunteering and civic engagement are just one aspect of the holistic admissions process, evidence suggests that they can be more significant than some might assume.

For those that need help with any part of the admissions process, we can help. Learn about what makes us different .