1. Start as early as possible – college is a good time; keep volunteering when you join the work force, even if you can spend only a few hours a month.
2. Pick projects that are important for you and that are in line with your interests and needs. To improve your public speaking join Toast Masters, or volunteer with Big Brother Big Sister if you care about kids. Don’t be afraid to join a smaller less-known organization – you might get a chance to have a greater impact on it.
3. Make it work – if you travel a lot or don’t have time to meet people in person, find community work that you can do remotely or as part of your work (recruiting, volunteer projects with the company etc).
4. Go for quality, not quantity - it’s not about the number of organizations you participate in, it’s your impact on them and how you were able o contribute to that community.
5. The later you start, the less impact it is going to have on your application – anything that you have started in the last year might be viewed as a vehicle to improve your candidacy, so go ahead and do it if you care but don’t expect this to improve your chances.
About Yael Redelman-Sidi
Yael Redelman-Sidi , the founder of Admit 1 MBA is an experienced Admissions consultant who worked at NYU's MBA Admissions as well as a graduate of the NYU MBA full-time program. She specializes in customized and personal admissions consulting for top MBA programs and has worked with candidates from US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East to gain admission into MBA programs such as Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, NYU and others.
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To receive a 10% discount on both hourly and premium service for in person consultations in the New York City office or via phone/skype: 
Include F1GMAT10 in your inquiry to [email protected] or 1-917-300-1066.
About the Author
I am Atul Jose, Founding Consultant of F1GMAT, an MBA admissions consultancy that has worked with applicants since 2009.
For the past 15 years I have edited the application files of admits to the M7 programs: Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg School of Management, and Columbia Business School, together with admits to Berkeley Haas, Yale School of Management, NYU Stern, Michigan Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, SDA Bocconi, IESE Business School, HEC Paris, McCombs, and Tepper, plus other programs inside the global top 30.
My work covers the full MBA application deliverable: career planning and profile evaluation, application essay editing, recommendation letter editing, mock interviews and interview preparation, scholarship and fellowship essay editing, and cover letter editing for funding applications. Full bio with credentials and admit history is here.
I am the author of the Winning MBA Essay Guide, the best-selling essay guide covering M7 MBA programs. I have written and updated the guide annually since 2013, which makes the 2026 edition the thirteenth.
The reason I still write and edit essays every cycle: a good MBA essay carries a real applicant's voice. Writing essays for F1GMAT's Books and Editing essays weekly is how I stay calibrated to what current admissions committees respond to.
Contact me for school selection, career planning, essay strategy, narrative development, essay editing, interview preparation, scholarship essay editing, or guidance documents for recommendation letters.