Lack of community service hours...Need opinions

[ptlover]

Hi Everyone!

I just had a question about a dilemma I am facing. Throughout college I worked a lot and participated in a few organizations. Since I worked a lot to support myself I had no time to complete community service. As much as I wanted to it would have been hard. Although I do have a lack of service hours that doesn't mean while in PT school it is not something I want to do. Its actually one of my top priorities since I have always wanted to. How do you overcome this lack of service hours on an application?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Azimuthal]

I had 0 community service hours. If its not something you do regularly and for an extended length of time consistently, it's almost worthless anyways. I would concentrate more on leadership positions and spearheading community projects. Tutoring is great also. Two to three times serving the homeless at the shelter over a span of 3 years is cliche to me. All it shows is something you did so that you had something to put on paper. Not much dedication, no leadership and obviously no passion in doing so.

 

[Myosin]

I don't have any either. I don't care anymore either. I have spoken to several professors and DPTs about this because it was really worrying me when I first started out. You can even look up the thread I made about it.

Like Azimuthal said above, if you haven't been doing it consistently and over a long period of time, it looks artificial and tells them it is nothing more than fluff for your resume.

I am a non traditional student that works a full time job and spent my entire undergrad taking care of a sick family. I would have loved to do some community service to get away from the stress I had at the time. It would have at least let me space out of reality for awhile.

Schools know that not everyone who applies has time to do pt hours and community service. Even full time undergrad students who have nothing other than class find this hard to do.

This is why GPA and GRE are the two main deciding factors towards your acceptance at the majority of schools. Some here will argue all day about how "holistic" some schools are, but if you're going to play that game you have to be more clear about what makes community service a competitive trait.

Is the food bank better than the soup kitchen? How does volunteering at Goodwill compare to those two? At what specific or approximate number of community service hours do you make up for a .10 GPA difference between applicants? If I have X00 hours, does that make me equivalent or better than someone who scored 8 points higher than me on the GRE?

Who is worth more, a person who works full time to support him/herself because they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth or someone who did X number of hours at the soup kitchen?

Not saying it's not helpful, but I seriously doubt a lack of community service is a deal breaker for any school and I also doubt you're ever going to be in a situation where hours at the local food bank makes a review committee say "Yep, it was a close decision between Bill and Joe, but Bill had those 8 hours of community service, so we chose him."

Focus on your GPA, GRE, LOR, and your actual physical therapy shadowing hours. If they ask why you didn't join the underwater basket weaving club, chess club, and witch craft club, tell them you had to worry about f****** feeding yourself first

 

[nazmar]

If they ask why you didn't join the underwater basket weaving club, chess club, and witch craft club, tell them you had to worry about f****** feeding yourself first

Amen.

 

[dcscott325]

I am currently in the same boat. I guess I'm considered a "non-traditional" student because I received my BS several years ago and am just now going back to take the last few required classes before (hopefully) getting accepted into the 2014 PT program. But non-traditional also means that I've been working full-time, taking night classes, and all my "volunteer" work has been getting my observation hours! After homework, eating, sleeping, showering, and working out, there's no time left in the day for ADDITIONAL community device/volunteer work!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this problem. I did however, speak to one of the PT's I was shadowing and she suggested putting something a little unconventional in that section-- she told me to list all of the half marathons I've ran in the last couple of years. She figured something would be better than leaving it completely blank. Besides, even if I started community service now, the dates alone would show them that I was only doing it to put a check in the box.

Has anyone actually gotten accepted with no community service? Or have any other advice about adding the marathons?????

Thanks guys!