From medical and law schools to highly coveted graduate programs, volunteer experience is a must – but at what cost?
Picture this: You are a highly driven and passionate student, aspiring to become a surgeon. Balancing work and full-time studies to support yourself and your family, you have very little time outside of your commitments. However, your unwavering dedication to school and work has earned you glowing references, excellent grades, and a diverse skill set. You are on the cusp of making your dreams come true, but there’s one problem – you don’t have the hundreds of hours of volunteer experience recommended to apply to MD programs in the country.
For many undergraduate students, this dilemma is a reality – one that comes at the cost of their futures.
A variety of professional schools and graduate programs either require or give significant weight to volunteer experience during undergraduate years. For instance, medical and law schools ask applicants to submit a thorough portfolio of their experiences, called an autobiographical sketch. And post-graduate programs require students to submit their CVs as a key component of the application.
In theory, gaining volunteer experience is great.
For students, volunteering is an opportunity to build valuable skills, foster new relationships and learn more about their field of interest. On the other hand, for universities, a student’s volunteer work demonstrates their holistic qualities, allowing admissions teams to select candidates they believe will represent the institution’s visions and values.
However, gaining volunteer experience is not feasible for everyone. Students coming from low-income or socioeconomically disadvantaged households often juggle multiple courses and jobs just to make ends meet.
Is it truly fair to expect students to devote hours to unpaid work when they are worried about paying the month’s rent or providing for their families? Should they be more concerned about putting food on the table or committing to a leadership role to serve their community?
The short answer is no.
As much as volunteering demonstrates an applicant’s skills and qualities, it is a privilege – one that hinders students from achieving their full potential and traps them in a vicious cycle of income inequality.
As much as volunteering demonstrates an applicant’s skills and qualities, it is a privilege – one that hinders students from achieving their full potential and traps them in a vicious cycle of income inequality.
Volunteering requirements inadvertently pose barriers for talented individuals who lack the time or resources to commit to unpaid work, skewing the pool of applicants and matriculants to post-graduate programs.
In the context of low-income or disadvantaged students, paid experience should be equally valued and recognized by admission committees. Whether a student volunteered countless hours at a world-renowned research facility or worked long shifts at a fast-food restaurant shouldn’t matter. If admissions committees are truly looking for candidates with holistic qualities instead of stellar achievements, what should matter is the depth of learning students experience in their roles.
Higher education, and more importantly, the opportunity to pursue one’s dream career shouldn’t be a privilege solely afforded by rich kids.
As institutions begin to adopt and prioritize equity-based practices, it is imperative that universities work to remove obstacles for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and find more inclusive ways to measure an applicant’s qualities or merit.
As institutions begin to adopt and prioritize equity-based practices, it is imperative that universities work to remove obstacles for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and find more inclusive ways to measure an applicant’s qualities or merit.
At a university with an ever-growing student population, you might expect that academic distinctions would get more competitive. But a recent policy change in the DeGroote School of Business will now make it easier for more students to earn an honours degree.
At the Feb. 13 meeting of University Senate, a motion was passed to change the average requirement to enter the level three honours stream of the Bachelor of Commerce program from a 6 (67-69 per cent) to a 5 (63-66 per cent).
According to Giri Kanagaretnam, Associate Dean at DeGroote, the change is only meant to “make entry and exit requirements consistent.”
To graduate with an Honours B. Com., a cumulative average (CA) of 5 is required. A CA of 5 is also the standard for passing from Level I to Level II of the program.
Kanagaretnam was unsure as to why the averages were different in the first place, but he said the standards have remained the same since the separation of the Honours stream about 20 years ago.
“One of the biggest complaints is that we have these two programs that are the same length,” he said of the B.Com. and Honours B.Com., which are both four-year degrees.
The difference between the two, aside from the distinction itself, is the availability of electives. While Honours students have their choice of business electives, regular B.Com. students must choose from courses offered outside the department.
It is unclear as to how many students this will affect. The current Level III B.Com class has 81 students, 61 of whom passed into the Honours stream with an average of at least 6.
“We cannot promise anything until we review their grades in May,” Kanagaretnam said of the effect on current second-year students.
The department also chose to allow third-year students who fell just short of meeting the requirement of a 6 to switch into the Honours stream in Sept. 2013.
Applying the change only to incoming students was an option, but Kanagaretnam explained the rationale behind the decision, saying that “given that [the Honours degree] would be students’ first choice, why not extend that to them?”
Though the motion was passed before reading week, when the Silhouette went to press, students had yet to be notified of the change. The Academic Office at DeGroote reported that it would be alerting students to the new policy by email later in the week.
The shift in requirements will be put forward in Sept. 2013 and was described as a “minor structural change” done in preparation for changes to the B.Com. curriculum which aligns with the Forward with Integrity priorities.
