Getting your hours verified for college

Admissions offices care less about a big number of hours than about what you did, for how long, and what changed because of it. Scholarship committees are often more literal: many ask for a log of hours, and some ask for a supervisor who can confirm them. Either way, a record that is specific and confirmed is worth far more than a total you reconstructed from memory.

How the Common App activities section works

The Common App gives you room for up to 10 activities. For each one you enter the organization's name (up to 100 characters), your position or leadership (up to 50 characters) and a description (up to 150 characters), along with your grade levels, hours per week and weeks per year. That is not much space, which is why precise records help: you can say exactly what you did and for how long.

What makes hours believable

• Consistency. Two years at one food pantry says more than twenty one day events.
• Specifics. "Trained new volunteers on the sorting line" beats "helped out."
• Someone who can confirm it. A supervisor's name, and ideally confirmation from the organization itself.
• Dates. Hours logged when they happened, not all at once in senior year.

Building a record anyone can check

On Volanee, an organization confirms your hours at the time, either by scanning a pass on your phone or from its own account. Each hour on your record says how it was confirmed. When you export your hours as a PDF, it carries a verification code that an admissions office, a counselor or a scholarship committee can check on Volanee without an account.

You can also turn your verified hours into a portfolio page to share with an application. It shows only confirmed hours and your first name and last initial, never your contact details, and it stays private until you turn it on. Volanee also writes out your Common App activity entries, cut to the form's limits, so you can paste them straight in.