Community Service plays a significant role in evaluating MBA applicants’ profile for the following reasons:
1. Values: Seeing how you spend your time outside of work is a good indication of what are the important things in your life (compared with your claims in other parts of the application)
2. Contributions to the program: MBA’s are student-driven programs; clubs are run by current MBA students and strong leaders make the MBA experience better by organizing events, adding new clubs/events/treks, and strengthening the relationship with alumni and recruiters. If you’ve been involved in the past, it’s likely that you will contribute to such activities during your MBA.
3. Leadership: If you perceive yourself as a leader but don’t manage people in your job, then community service will help you. Community work shows the schools your leadership potential and skills.
4. Consistency: MBA programs like people who are focused and have a long term view, so a 3 years involvement of 2 hours per month in your community is more significant than a 2-weeks volunteer project in Africa or another remote location.
5. Time management: All MBA applicants are ambitious, hard working, motivated and smart individuals. If you can succeed professionally and volunteer, it’s a good sign of your potential to successfully juggle academic, recruiting and extra-curricular at school.
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.
Limited time offer
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.