EDITORIAL: Helping to Help Yourself

By Kaylee Foote, Breanna Ostrander, Kara McKlusky, and Rachel Partlow

You see a girl working at the soup kitchen. She’s smiling, and enthusiastically helps to serve. But what’s going through her head? We assume she’s thinking simple thoughts about making a difference and helping the unfortunate: warm, sweet feelings. But a peek into her head reveals she’s thinking about how her service will get her into college.

Helping your community used to be a great judge of character, where people actually wanted to help and see their community prosper. Now, if you give up a few hours of your weekend, you can get into colleges more easily. Blaming students for college resume padding is misplaced; the blame belongs to the colleges. Students feel as if they need to be the best they can be to get into a school, which is true. Yet, if that includes faking sincerity, then it should not be a large requirement. There should be no personal benefits to doing community service, other than feeling good about yourself.

We need to focus on the “why,” not the “what.” College applications only reflect the shell of a student, what’s on the outside, what everyone else sees. So a student did a lot of community service. Based on that information you’d say that makes them an excellent candidate for whatever school they are applying to (granted the rest of their application is of good quality). Wrong. Colleges foolishly base a lot of their acceptance qualifications on the “shells” of students. Many would be surprised to find that inside those seemingly perfect shells are not so stunning interiors.

Yes, a kid did a lot of community service and yes, they may have taken many AP classes, but what college applications fail to acknowledge is why? Maybe they did community service just for the college application and maybe they took AP classes in subjects they hate or aren’t even good at, just because it looks good to colleges?

These candidates are a little less stunning now aren’t they? The sad thing is this theoretical situation is anything but theoretical. It’s the real deal. Beneath that glossy exterior of students today is a slightly less appealing center that college applications fail to acknowledge.