Vol.15 No.7 March 2001
Volunteering...
Doing Good While Getting In
VOLUNTEERING has come into its own as a popular activity for high school students. According to the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education, the percent of high school seniors who participate in community affairs or volunteer work at least once a week had begun a steady increase after flat or decreasing levels of activity during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Whatever the cause for the new volunteerism, when the time comes to apply for college, more and more students have community service activities to put on their applications. So this month, CB consulted a number of colleges to get their advice on how to make "doing good" a benefit on an application. [back to top]
RECENT TRENDS
After reaching a low of 5.9 percent in 1991, the percent of seniors volunteering at least once a week had risen to nearly 10 percent by 1996, the latest year of government statistics. The percentage volunteering at least once a month had risen from 22 percent in 1990 to a healthy 28 percent in 1994. And, nearly half of all students reported participation in a volunteer activity at least a few times a year.
What is at the root of this increase in civic involvement? Some would say that it is a function of a generation. After the decades dominated by Generation X, which has acquired a reputation for self-preservation and civic involvement on a small scale, the current "Millennial Generation" is seen as more concerned with the health and well-being of their communities and their world.
In fact, generational historians Neil Howe and Bill Strauss compare the Millennial Generation to the "Silent Generation" that reached adulthood between the Great Depression and World War II and held the country together at home while the "Greatest Generation" fought on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific.
Or, perhaps it is a result of mandate rather than altruism. In a quest to encourage students to pursue learning and involvement outside the classroom, many schools have instituted community service requirements that must be completed prior to graduation.
These requirements have met with mixed reactions, with some saying that the programs encourage students to experience the rewards of service, with others arguing that mandating service will make volunteering distasteful, causing it to become another chore similar to multiplication drills.
Whatever the reason for community involvement, college-bound students should make the experience work for them in their college applications. [back to top]
SHOWING COMMITMENT
At the same time, volunteerism should not be simply a last-minute attempt to buff up an otherwise lackluster admissions application. Colleges will see through the attempt.
"Admissions officers are going to be looking to see that it isn't a one-shot deal," said Mary Hession Matunis, director of volunteer services at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. "Anyone can do one nice thing for one hour. That's not volunteerism."
Mike Timko, director of admissions for Washington and Jefferson University in Washington, Pennsylvania, agrees: "We look for the number of hours the student puts into it and the length of commitment."
Thus, just as one play does not make a thespian, so too does a volunteer need to show a sustained commitment to his or her chosen project. Students should be encouraged to pick a project or focus area on which to concentrate, rather than scattering their volunteer hours across many ventures. [back to top]
DON'T FOLLOW THE CROWD
Mike Maxey, director of admissions for Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, suggests that students find a unique need and craft a response, rather than simply getting involved in an existing project. "There's a difference between the student who spent a day with the basketball team reading to children and the student who worked one-on-one with a child for a year. The student who sees a need and responds to it rather than just 'going with the flow' is the one that is really impressive," he said.
One of the most significant applicant volunteer activities Maxey has seen came at the time of the Red River flooding. An applicant took the initiative to collect stuffed animals and send them to the Midwest so that children in flood-damaged areas would have them for Christmas. Maxey said that this project demonstrated "depth and perceptiveness of need," two qualities that make a service project stand out from the pack.
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ACT LOCALLY
One of the best places for a student to identify a unique need is in his or her own neighborhood. Among the most impressive projects that Timko of Washington and Jefferson ever saw involved just such a response to a local need. "I remember one student started her own door-to-door food delivery service for the elderly. She raised all the money to buy the food and made all the deliveries herself," Timko said.
When reflecting on community service in admission applications, Timko says that, "We're looking for any kind of community improvement." The student who remembers the adage that "charity begins at home" is most likely to discover an impressive and rewarding project. [back to top]
FOLLOW INTERESTS
Students can also use their service hours to investigate interests, academic areas and careers. Lyn Fulton-John, director of international admissions at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, explains: "Volunteerism is a great way to explore potential career choices. A student thinking about a possible career in education could serve as a tutor in the public schools or teach English to families new to the U.S.," she advises.
úlso, students with a certain gift be it in science, writing, athletics or music might volunteer to teach their skills to younger children from low-income areas. Those thinking of psychology might go through the training to become a crisis-line counselor. The Humane Society needs people interested in animal welfare-perfect for someone who might want to be a veterinarian.
Other options: pre-law students might work with the area courts' guardian ad litem program. Those interested in the building trades might donate hours to Habitat for Humanity. [back to top]
By including an academic component in a volunteer activity, students are encouraged to reflect upon their experience and may even earn academic credit. Andrea Zale, assistant director of admissions at Millsaps College, explains the difference between service learning and simple service: "What differentiates service learning is that the participants discuss what they are about to do and the significance they think it will have beforehand. After they participate in the service, they have some type of reflection activity-writing a paper, having a group discussion or making a film to assess it."
Service learning programs therefore give the student something tangible to show the admissions committee, a plus with any application. This degree of structure may also make it easier for students to obtain recommendations from their service supervisors, another plus on the admission application. [back to top]
SHOW MATURITY
"What I like to see is that the person has matured enough to make a contribution to the situation, but also let the situation make a contribution to their own life," said Maxey. Frank Smith, formerly associate director of admission at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, remembers just such a situation involving a student who worked with a child with cerebral palsy. "In one year, he reported seeing a child who could barely lift his head progress to crawling over 500 feet each day. The volunteer efforts of the young man have surely had a positive effect on the boy and his family. However, the young man will probably tell you that he is the one who has truly been positively impacted by the experiences," Smith said.
Timko agrees that students should choose an activity that will help them to grow personally. "It should help shape them, not just build a profile," he said. [back to top]
BE SERIOUS
Ultimately, a volunteer effort will take time and commitment, and students should be wary of attempting to rush through it or add it simply to improve their application. Insincere efforts are easily identified by colleges, said Fulton-John. "We can easily pick out applicants whose resumes are based on a desire to pad their application because their time commitment and level of involvement are generally minimal. It also comes through very clearly during a college interview and not only makes the student look bad, but makes the sincerity of everything they say suspect."
High schools should also be wary of instituting a community service requirement for their students just to increase their chances for college admission. For one thing, a well-developed extracurricular program will do the same thing. "Volunteer activities are evaluated equally with extracurricular activities and sports," said Timko. He also added that "I prefer to see non-mandatory volunteer activities," as opposed to a service requirement.
Hession Matunis at Wilkes-Barre questions whether required service can even be called volunteering. "I do not believe that it can be a requirement. Then it is not considered volunteering, it is rather called community service. Call it like it is!," she advises. [back to top]
DOES IT COUNT?
So, will a volunteer activity on an application turn a deny into an admit? "Not at that level," said Timko, "but it can assist in understanding the student better and potentially influence scholarship decisions." Maxey agrees that "service won't override a deny," but it may show that the student possesses qualities, like tenacity and creativity, that will be useful in his or her academic career. Adding a committed volunteer to the entering class will also help a college to deepen the diversity of the class, just as the school might choose to admit a musician or athlete for the same reason.
"There is a great tendency to assume that there is some sort of magic bullet" in the admissions process, said Maxey. This is not the case, however, and he cautions students "don't [volunteer] because they think it will get them in."
Service undertaken for the right reasons is another matter. "It is best if the student works out of some sort of internal drive," said Maxey. When they do, "it shines like the sun in the morning." And, more importantly, the experience can help the student better understand the world and his or her place in it. [back to top]
THE COUNSELOR'S CORNER
Dealing with Unrealistic Expectations
Montaigne must have had high school college counselors in mind when he wrote, "There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation." In the current competitive admission scene, "expectation" over college acceptances are exceptionally high and unrealistic. What should be at best a process of growth and self-realization often becomes a relentless pursuit of multiple admits to Ivies, Little Ivies and other prestigious colleges. The apocryphal story of the car sticker that heralds the Princeton logo and then in small print says, "Also accepted at Stanford, Amherst, Colgate and Bates" hits too close to the bone.
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DIFFICULT PARENTS
Over my 25 years of counseling students for college, most of their parents have struck me as genuinely welcoming direction, advice and help. As a parent myself, I have sympathized with their fear that their child might get lost in a game of numbers. But no amount of personalized, caring work with seniors and their parents can effectively eliminate completely from our lives the difficult parents who complain that junior's failure to be admitted to an Ivy is the high school's or our fault. They pass their stress and anxiety along to us. The "American Dream" that a prestigious college will lead to open doors of opportunity, higher pay and increased social status, turns into a nightmare.
Since parents often don't understand the process well enough to be constructively involved, their anxiety becomes misdirected and destructive. As counselors we work hard to understand the reasons behind a family's regressive and aggressive behavior so that our efficiency as counselors is not impaired by our own feelings of anger, hurt and resentment. We are more effective at this if we involve families directly and importantly in the critical decision making about college.
It is unrealistic to believe that parental input and approval are not necessary components in the development of a senior. The process of getting into college is not, in my opinion, the issue on which to hang independence from parental attitudes. This may, in fact, happen, but only by building self-esteem and confidence, not eroding them. We as counselors need to help parents help their sons and daughters distinguish between individual worth and college acceptances as trophies of recognition and authentication. [back to top]
POSSIBLE REJECTION
Applying to college leaves most students feeling that they are being judged by the cold, objective outside world, many for the first time. They face the real possibility of rejection. The process reveals the conflict, fear, self-doubt and insecurity as well as the aspirations and hopes of an emerging identity. The higher those expectations, the greater the risk of failure. We must appreciate how frightened students, even the most seemingly secure ones, are of failing to match parental and societal expectations. I felt this keenly when a student who had two acceptances from Ivy League colleges, but was waiting to hear from Harvard confessed, "I'm scared. I'm my parents only hope to achieve through me what they never had."
The process of applying to college is laden with personal and emotional considerations which have little to do specifically with which college junior will attend. This process, because it occurs when it does in the development of the child, bears the brunt of emotional concerns that cause family chaos. Status is confused with stature. Not getting into a prestigious college lowers self-esteem and erodes personal worth.
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CONSTRUCTIVE INVOLVEMENT
As is so often the case, the simplest practice is often the most effective. I have found that the best safeguard against misunderstanding with parents, and ultimately against parental pressure and conflict, is constructive involvement of parents all through the second half of junior and all of senior year. Parents learn that they cannot control the application process or its outcome. But they are not completely powerless in many cases to affect it positively. Their understanding of the process and their playing a significant role in it will increase the cooperation between child and parent, between parent and counselor and ultimately, between student and counselor.
Families need encouragement to explore possibilities together with an eye to finding the best academic and social environment. It is our job to help families make wise decisions and learn to live with them. We must not make the decisions for them. This non-directive approach helps students to explore possibilities with our guidance and to take responsibility for their actions, both in terms of their academic records, and in terms of the actual steps of the admission process. [back to top]
AFFIRMING PERSONAL WORTH
One of the counselor's most important roles is to help students and families recognize and review their contributions; to acknowledge real strengths and thereby ward off the fear generated by feelings of inadequacy. Students need help looking at their whole selves. It is vital for them to be able to see the worth of their personal accomplishments in a school community, which prospective colleges value. They need help coming to see that a college that does not recognize those strengths, along with academic achievement and high test scores, or instead of them, may not be the right environment for them.
It is important for parents to accompany their daughters and sons on at least some college visits. Parents need to know colleges as they are, not as they might remember them by reputations now outdated. Information sessions inform families about the role numbers play in the admission process. It is good for them to hear it from someone else!
The results of the application process, whatever they turn out to be, are ultimately easier for families to live with than the process itself. After the "sturm und drang," parents become accepting of existing choices. Parents and students may need to engage in regressive behavior, such as yelling, crying or blaming. Like all transitional periods, the senior year and the application process are characterized by fear and uncertainty. But, if the process is to have been more than a mere means to an end, it should itself be educational. It should teach students and parents something about themselves and about how others perceive them. And college counseling should aspire toward the objectives of any counseling: self-understanding and self-actualization. n
Frank C. Leana, Ph.D. is an independent college counselor and author in New York City. [back to top]
ADMISSIONS WATCH
Enrollment Record. Kansas State University posted an all-time enrollment record of 21,929 students for the 2000-2001 year, up from 21,543 in 1999. The number of new freshmen and new undergraduate students (including transfers) was also up. University officials attribute the increase to academic program, cost and atmosphere.
UMass Math. Ten first-year students, plus 40 juniors and seniors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will receive National Science Foundation scholarships to study mathematics, computer science and engineering. NSF awarded the university $220,000 to fund its economically-disadvantaged scholars.
Wartburg Watch. Wartburg College in Iowa has begun an intensive new effort to recruit out-of-state and overseas students. Not only has it placed full-time counselors in surrounding states, but it created e-mail databases with prospective students grouped by interests so Wartburg faculty and staff can keep in contact with them. For more information, contact Doug Bowman, director of admissions at bowmandoug@ wartburg.edu. [back to top]
Holding Steady. Garrett Community College in McHenry, Maryland, enrolled slightly more students in the fall of 2000 than 1999. Most of Garrett's 685 students hail from Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The most popular programs with Garrett students are education, business and information technologies, natural resources and wildlife technology, agricultural management, health programs and juvenile justice.
Fairfield Funds. Thanks to a $6 million gift from a Boston venture capitalist, Fairfield U. in Connecticut will award $250,000 a year for financially-needy freshmen to study English, modern languages or economics. [back to top]
NEWS YOU CAN USE
Campus Crime Reports. Now prospective students can use their home or school computers to check out campus crime statistics of the colleges in which they are interested by going to www.ope.ed.gov/ security.
Ten years ago, Congress mandated annual crime reports from all U.S. colleges and universities, and in 1998, it mandated that those results be posted on the Internet. As a result, the statistics on violent crimes, hate crimes, burglaries, auto theft, liquor, drug and weapons violations at 6,700 schools are now public. However, users can only obtain statistics one school at a time, and there is no uniform format for presenting the data for comparison. [back to top]
Top 20 Master Institutions. Where do most students go to earn their master's degrees and doctorates? Here's the top 20 as determined by the Council of Graduate Schools: Michigan; Texas at Austin; George Washington; Ohio State; Boston U.; Southern California; U. of Phoenix; Illinois at Urbana; South Carolina; Harvard; Wisconsin-Madison; Pennsylvania; U. of Washington; U. of Chicago; Wayne State; Penn State; Lesley U.; U.C.L.A.; Stanford; and Pittsburgh.
Paper Still Popular. Online applications are now used by nearly three quarters of all colleges and universities, according to a recent Associated Press report, but most students still submit paper applications. Last year, fewer than one-third of all applications were filed electronically.
In part, because they don't want to take any chances on one of the most important decisions they have to make, students prefer to create a paper trail. And parents who applied to college using paper applications years ago often put pressure on their children to do the same. Yet, West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon began requiring electronic applications in the fall of 2000. MIT has required them since 1998. California Polytechnical U. received 82 percent of its applications online in 1999. [back to top]
Who Drops Out? In 1999, 28 percent of public university students and nearly 25 percent of private college students dropped out, most of them first-year students, according to statistics from ACT.
Also, preliminarly findings from the new study of over 5,000 students found that over 55 percent of freshmen drank beer at least occassionally. Nearly 43 percent of the freshmen said they felt "overwhelmed" by the end of their first year and almost the same percentage said they felt "bored." And while only 21 percent of the students found lectures by their teachers to be important, 96 percent said their classes frequently used the method, suggesting that the very learning structure most students encounter is partially responsible for them leaving school.
Odds and Ends. Brandeis U. in Massachusetts will be granting more scholarships for first-generation students next year, thanks to a new $5 million grant from the Chase Manhattan Foundation.
Readers who are mystified by the continuing increase in college costs might turn to Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much by Ronald G. Ehrenberg (Harvard University Press, 2000).
For another look into the future see Cyberschools: An Education Renaissance by Glenn R. Jones, the founder and CEO of Jones International University. To find out more, go to www.cyberschools.com. ISBN 1-885400-76-4. Price $14.95
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CURRICULUM CAPSULES
Smaller is Smarter? Shimer College in Waukegan, Illinois, has been educating students in the Liberal Arts since 1853. The unconventional small school, 107 students, prides itself on tiny, discussion-oriented classes that study the Classics and integrate different fields of knowledge. While some Shimer students may look like they stepped out of the 1960s, they are definitely high achievers. A 1998 University of Wisconsin study found that Shimer ranked third in the nation in the percentage of students who enter doctoral programs.
Legal Connection. Becker College in Worcester, Massachusetts, has joined the Massachusetts School of Law in Andover to offer students an early entry into law school. Becker students can now begin their first year of law study during their senior year. Graduates gain an undergraduate in legal studies as well as a law degree. [back to top]
E-Commerce Technology. Next fall, Vermont Technical College, in Randolph Center, will launch new associate degree programs in e-commerce technology and computer engineering technology. Additionally, VTC's "plus two" bachelor's degree program in the same subjects will prepare students for jobs as advanced computer hardware technicians, programers and advanced network and system administrators.
Proud to be Un-PC. Insight magazine has named Grove City College in Pennsylvania, as one of the nation's top 15 schools that "refuse to be politically correct." In addition to assessing the degree of political correctness, the ranking factored in curriculum, focus on teaching and student-centered services. [back to top]
Bellarmine Becomes University.y´To coincide with the celebration of it's 50th anniversary, Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky, has changed its name to Bellarmine University. The change brings the school's name more closely in line with its old Carnegie classification as a comprehensive university. Also coinciding with the anniversary celebration, the university has launched a virtual campus tour on its website; www.bellarmine.edu.
Going Wireless. Students who attend the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio, will be attending classes in a wireless world. The college has installed MERLIN, the Media-Rich Learning Infrastructure, which will allow students to use a wireless pathway to information, software and the internet anywhere on campus. Students have access through hand-held computers, which all freshmen received as they arrived on campus this fall. The program is financed by a $250 per semester technology fee. Students keep their hand-held computer after graduation. [back to top]
Becoming Coed. Notre Dame College of Ohio will begin admitting men in January 2001. The college anticipates that 10 percent of its students will be men by next year. Founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame, the school currently enrolls about 750 undergraduates and 90 graduate students
Dayton's New Engineering Curriculum. Engineers need strong technical skills and a solid math background. But, engineering students at the University of Dayton in Ohio, are learning something else; business skills and ethical standards. Dayton's new program will require students to take courses that show connections across engineering disciplines, in addition to courses that emphasize decision making, project management, working with teams and ethics within the profession. [back to top]
COLLEGE BOUND's Editor: R. Craig Sautter, DePaul University; Associate Editors: Connie Amon, Jennifer C. Patterson; Assistant Editor: Larry Busking; Circulation: Irma Gonzalez-Hider; Illustration: Louis Coronel; Board of Advisors: Claire D. Friedlander, Bedford (NY) Central School District; Howard Greene, author, The Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning Series; Terence Giffin, Choate-Rosemary Hall; Frank C. Leana, Ph.D., educational counselor; Virginia Vogel, Educational Guidance Services; M. Fredric Volkmann, Washington University in St. Louis, Mary Ann Willis, Bayside Academy (Daphne, Ala.).
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