Shellee Howard, founder of CollegeReady, explains why colleges care about service work. Her son traveled to Kenya to work with orphaned children, which became a passion project that helped him get into Ivy League schools. Colleges want genuine motivation, not just volunteer hours.
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Hello, my name is Shellee Howard and I am the founder and owner of CollegeReady. Today I'd like to share with you a very important piece to your college application, and that's called your service hours. There are certain hours that you want to achieve before you apply to college, and with CollegeReady's help, we help students create their own passion project and make a difference in the world. So you may be asking yourself, isn't all community service created equal, but in reality, no, it's not. There's good service, there's great service, and there's amazing service. What do I mean? Good service is where you go and you show up and you sign your name and you do something nice for the community. That's good, absolutely good. Great service is where you actually have something in your heart that you feel like you're giving to the community that's really making a difference, and you feel very proud to be there. So what's amazing easy in service? Well, I'll share a brief story with you. When my son was in his junior year of high school, I asked him, how many service hours do you have? And he says, I have enough to graduate, Mom, I'm fine. The reality was he wasn't fine and he didn't have enough service hours. So at that point, we decided to do something that was going to make a big difference for him. And he had passion in two things: in travel and helping children. So what we ended up doing is going to Kenya, Africa, and living with a Swahili family. And it was an amazing experience to work with little orphans in some of the worst slums of the world. What made it so impactful for him is because those children had nothing, and he learned that he can impact people and give them hope and give them happiness. So when we came back to the United States, he continued on with this passion project, and he made a huge impact. He became Student of the Month, Student of the Year, and his essay is truly what got him into the Ivy League schools. So why is that important? Because every student with College Ready must agree to do service hours. Colleges want to see students with passion. They want to see students who have a motivation and a drive. So please give us the opportunity to help your student find their passion and do something nice for the community, and let's get a passion project started. Thank you.
