Volunteering/Community Service for SLAC

[Anonymous]

MY DD is HS sophomore. Her grades are excellent, her courses are challenging, and she has a sports-filled "resume." No test scores yet. She is hoping to go to a selective liberal arts college. I told her that I thought that she would need a good deal of community service in addition to what she has going on right now. How many hours or what frequency should she aim for? She does want to volunteer, but really wants it to be suited to her interests. She is interested in medicine and health care. Checking online, it looks like most hospitals only accept volunteers 18 & older. Does anyone know any healthcare-related places that allow younger volunteers? We are in NOVA. If she cannot find something, would other volunteer hours (e.g., animal shelter, soup kitchen, etc) greatly benefit her admission chances? Is it best to begin asap and try to continue through senior year? TIA

[Anonymous]

It's about passions, not about completing the resume. What about Special Olympics, or coaching lower income kids in her sports, or doing some kind of fundraising drive to purchase equipment for her sports (cleats for kids in Africa or something like that).

[Anonymous]

Agree much better to be involved in a community service project or issue that she truly feels connected to, so either via an established program through her school (most local independent schools seem to have tutoring relationships with elementary schools for instance) or like prior poster said, getting involved with special olympics, paraolympics, or even just getting a coaching license or referee license and volunteering to help coach or ref games for a league that serves an underfunded group of players. Or collect sports equipment for a region hit by economic or lately weather-related problems. Anyway, that is better than just signing up for one day a week or month at a random health care facility most likely. And SLACs see right through pro forma community service simply for resume padding. My DDs got into highly ranked SLACs with or without lots of community service.