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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

You are missing: in order to gain access to these institutions, many people apparently have to forgoe those extracurriculars and focus only on their studies.

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No, to gain access to these institutions you are basically required to have half a dozen extracurriculars on your resume. They receive applications from so many white straight-A/4.0 students that extracurriculars are the only differentiating factor. Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service.

Whether these extracurriculars would expose you to different ethnicities and world views is dependant on demographics.

It's also based on access, I remember feeling initially impressed when a fellow applicant on College Confidential that applied to the same top school as myself did community service abroad in South America, when I then realized that it was very costly to do so, and that I couldn't have done anything so "impressive" only because my parents couldn't have covered the cost.

"Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service."

I have never heard of community service as a requirement to graduate high school. (No school in my district had this requirement.)

Granted, I understand your overall point. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be accepted by "elite" colleges. In fact, I had applied to nearly 12 colleges that were highly respected in Computer Science and was rejected from all of them.

It is an upper crust public school thing. Most people do not attend those schools.

Hey, look, it's a list of top 100 public schools in California!

http://patch.com/california/redlands/2016-top-100-public-hig...

None of the top ten schools on that list seem to have a community service requirement [0].

There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule regarding which schools do or don't have a community service requirement. Mission San Jose does, but Lynbrook does not.

[0] As determined by a quick google search for each to locate "$SCHOOL_NAME graduation requirements", followed by a quick scan for anything outside of required course credits.

I was mistaken, I thought it was a California state wide thing but I guess not.

Either way, your statement about the top 10 CA high schools is false. I attended Granada Hills Charter and San Marino high school (#1 and #7 respectively) and both do absolutely require community service. San Marino requires 40 hours over four years [1] and GHCHS requires 20 hours per semester [2]. A friend at Miramonte High School didn't have to do any community service but I recognize many of the schools on this list and can confirm they require community service. Searching for "graduation requirements" just gives you a list of credits you need but doesn't include community service or disciplinary rules for graduation.

[1] http://www.sanmarinohs.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=2241...

[2] http://www.ghchs.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_20226865/File/...

I will cede to your first source, but your second source is specifically for CSF membership at Granada Hills, which doesn't look like it's mandatory for graduation.

But sure, it looks like my naive search approach is inadequate, as it for the most part brought up credits (as you mentioned).

Looks like Saratoga High also has a community service requirement. Other than that, I can't find any others on that top ten sublist (e.g. Canyon Crest explicitly states it doesn't have a community service requirement [0], Lynbrook states that community service isn't a district requirement).

And to be fair, I don't think charter schools should be lumped in with the rest of the public schools, but that's probably just my opinion.

[0] http://cc.sduhsd.net/Counseling/Community-Service/ [1] http://www.lhs.fuhsd.org/resume

To get a high school diploma in Ontario, Canada you need to do 40 hours of community service: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/124a.html.

> I have never heard of community service as a requirement to graduate high school.

It's a general state-wide requirement in Maryland, for example. See http://coursebulletin.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/Home/Introduct... for reference.

And that's been the case for at least 20 years now.

I've always found it bizarre that people respond to an admissions system intended to reward the acceptibly unique by being the same as each other.

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