The Value of Volunteering
Volunteering Can Do More than Land You a Coveted Admission Offer! It is true that leadership involvement in community service is an important ingredient to securing an admission offer to a top business school.
But there are other benefits to volunteer work besides demonstrating to the admissions committee that you are a well-rounded, multi-dimensional leader who cares about society.
Researchers have been investigating the “Helper’s High”, a phrase that describes the energized feeling and excitement followed by a sense of calmness that individuals who are involved in helping others report, for a long time.
Allan Luks and Peggy Payne, authors of The Healing Power of Doing Good, studied over 3,000 Americans who were volunteers and found that 90% indicated that volunteering served as an “antidote to stress, chronic pain, and even insomnia”.
Now that’s good enough reason to get involved! No more excuses about not having enough time to volunteer in your community.
We are not talking about hours on end of volunteer work but finding something meaningful that you could get involved in and making a real contribution where you are.
I encourage you to take that step and commit to helping improve someone’s life either through mentorship or by volunteering and serving in a leadership capacity for local organizations in your own backyard.
You will not only benefit by feeling better about yourself after volunteering but this commitment will help you develop some experience that demonstrates to the admissions board that you are not simply a candidate who is in it for himself/herself only.
Here are a few places you could go to for information to get started:
- USA: Board Net USA
- UK: Volunteering England
- UK: Community Service Volunteers
- NIGERIA: Fate Foundation
- AFRICA: Eleghana
- GLOBAL: Serve Your World
- USA: All For Good
- USA: Volunteer Match