Parents are often surprised by my answer to how important is community service, because I’ll start by saying, “It’s not necessarily important.” Now what I mean by that is community service, of course, looks good on a college application – Providing service to community, getting involved with school activities; all of these extra-curricular are good because it shows a student is being active during high school. But one extra-curricular is not necessarily more important than another. So for example, I had a student who didn't have any school activities on his resume’, so he wasn't involved in sports, he didn't do extra-curricular community service, wasn't in a leadership position, but what he did was he followed his own passions and his own time. So he collected fish, he was ranked in chess, he played 5 different instruments and made electronic music – It’s not about being exceptional in any one thing, it’s not about picking one thing and that’s the one thing you have to do to get into college. It’s about being authentic, it’s about doing things that are interesting to you to see if you want to continue to do them. As long as you’re active throughout high school, college is going to see you in a good light.