Writing an admission essay is a skill that requires recognition of your story and its connection to an existing theme or question. Your overall goal is to create a compelling piece that showcases your personality, individual worldview, and academic aspirations. Using your volunteer experience helps you feature a unique quality or trait that goes beyond clichés or generalized statements. More importantly, these engagements create a persuasive piece to captivate the admissions committee.

Focus on Reflection

An interesting angle you can write about focuses on reflections about your volunteer experience. You can talk about the realizations from engaging with a specific group or community. If your encounter featured interaction with low-income families, then try to show changes in personal outlook or perspective. These inputs can showcase that you are self-aware and remain open to changing your viewpoints and attain personal improvement.

Talk about a Leader

Another strategy focuses on describing a leader you met during volunteer work. Make sure to create context about her role and position in the organization. Next, you outline why the person is essential. Specifically, you can elaborate on the specific personality or attributes that makes the individual stand out. The next step focuses on using the encounter to connect with your goals and aspirations. Tell the admissions committee how you look up to the leader and the necessary values you wish to imbibe in your professional career.

Elaborate on Teamwork 

There are also volunteer activities wherein participants get the chance to collaborate and work with teams. You can use the experience to showcase your ability to work with diverse personalities. Emphasize in your essay how you promote cooperation among members and strive to meet target goals and objectives. Alternatively, you can also expound on the role of teambuilding in shaping leadership and listening skills. Again, it is essential to connect these encounters with your pursuit of undergraduate study.

Conflict Resolution Strategies

Lastly, your volunteer experience can also offer rich insights of conflict in a group setting. Contrasting opinions and ideas among team members can become an area you can elaborate in the admission essay. For instance, you can identify how each one addressed a dominant personality and resolved differences. Another way to approach the situation focuses on conflict resolution. You should determine the actions taken by the group and think about potential alternatives that can make the situation better.

The Bottom Line: Digging Deep

Overall, the idea of sharing your volunteer experience is to help the admissions committee understand life lessons you got from the endeavor. Merely saying that you assisted a community project or taught students in an outreach program remain limited. You should make an effort to expound on the activity and critically reflect how it connects to your personality. These insights can create a unique interpretation of how you deal with current social issues.