Everything in life is cyclical. In the 1970’s, slim boot-cut style jeans with a tapered knee and a wide leg that pooled at the shoe were everywhere. Then during the halftime show at Super Bowl LIX, Kendrick Lamar brought that back big time. For the last 5 or 8 years, starting a non-profit was something every college applicant did. Of course, it’s a wonderful and altruistic thing to do. Find a need, create a non-profit, raise money, change lives. In the 00s, I saw this a lot. And to be honest, I was super impressed. These kids were doing what they could to make our world a better place. Or, at the very least, improve the lives of some children in a far off place. As each year passed, I started to see more and more non-profits make a cameo in college activities lists. That’s when the ticking clock started on how long this trend would last. But then it kept going on and on. And it felt like maybe this was something that wouldn’t be going away.
Four or five years, I worked with a kid who came to me with a pretty standard resume. Somewhere in the middle of it was a non-profit, with a name, and, I quickly learned, nothing else. I asked him about it and he confessed to me, “To be honest, dude, I don’t know what it does. My parents told me to start it because it would look good on my college apps. So, I started it yesterday.” He seemed embarrassed about it, and I can say something now, which I didn’t say to him then, he should be.
Creating the non-profit has become one big cliche, just ahead of, “my parents sent me to Costa Rica to build a home for underprivileged kids.” During this past admissions cycle, half of the kids I worked with had one. Sure, most of those were real, created with heart and good intention, a way to raise real money to solve real problems. But sadly, it was the other non-profits, created solely to make a college app look good that have dragged down the others. Admissions officers see the non-profit not for what was intended, but as a way to say, “Hey! Look at what I did,” and that has officially backfired.
Most college consultants and admissions officers can spot a “curated resume” from a mile away. One non-profit, several Ivy League summer programs, a dash of some generic university research, and it begins to look like someone read a blog post about what applicants MUST do to get into college. When applicants come to me in 9th or 10th grade, I now tell them to stay away from what everyone else did and some are still doing. How about an independent research project? How about a summer job – something I am seeing applicants do which colleges love, and give the kids something cool and fun to write about.
Of course, some students start a nonprofit for altruistic reasons that are genuine. And that will be apparent, based on how long the nonprofit has been around and what it actually does. But schools are starting to scrutinize activities lists these days, looking for insight into who the applicant is, not how they followed a template to look good to admissions officers.