I am planning to volunteer at a local nursing home this summer. What should I do to show that I have volunteered. Should I type something saying that I volunteered so many hours at X place and have the volunteer directing sign it. What did you guys do to show proof of volunteering for your application?
Thanks
You can have the person who was in charge of your experience write a letter of recommendation or you can simply list the experience with a description of what you did, the name (and title) of your supervisor/mentor and a phone number where they can be contacted for verification. If the person you worked under leaves, verification can still be done as long as there is a phone number. That's enough "proof".
The people who get in trouble are the folks who list a ton of volunteer experiences without the name of the organization or they name an organization but do not provide a mentor/contact person so that we can verify that they actually did volunteer. For example, a young man listed " worked with Habitat For Humanity" (HFH)every summer during college. HFH is a well-known organization with a national reputation. He didn't mention anything about his experience with HFH in his personal statement and he didn't list a contact or location in which he had volunteered. Our office staff was not able to verify his volunteer experience and called him for further information. He did not provide any further info but we gave him the benefit of the doubt and invited him for interview.
During the interview, he couldn't describe anything that he had done for this organization or give the name of anyone in this organization that he had worked with. When I asked him about his experience and asked for a name, he balked when I wrote down then name. In the end, he admitted that he "embellished" his volunteer experience which immediately threw his entire application into question. Needless to say even with the grades and MCAT scores, he received a rejection letter.
If you list a volunteer activity, be ready to completely describe your experience and list a name with number where your experience can be verified. If you don't have this information, obtain if before your submit or list this as an extracurricular. You can be asked to provide this info at any point in the application process to have it handy otherwise don't put this activity on your application. Everything in your application has be be verifiable. If not, it can call your entire application into question.
