How Three Students Showed Character with Community Involvement

By: Lilly G.

Admissions readers see thousands of applications listing hundreds of volunteer hours. Hours show attendance. That is what Spirit, the third S in the IvyBoost 4S Profile Method™, is about: fostering authentic character, resilience, mindset and moral values. Spirit shows up when a student notices a need, builds a response, and brings others along. Three students from following examples show the difference.

Empathy

Tanisha Parikh of Katy, Texas, started by writing handwritten letters to children struggling with mental health. That effort became Project Loved, a nonprofit that has reached more than 100 young people. Readers look for evidence that an applicant notices other people’s needs and responds personally. Tanisha’s work began with one child’s experience, which signals real concern for others rather than a requirement fulfilled.

Initiative

Sanay Jiandani, a senior at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, volunteered regularly at Martha’s Kitchen in San Jose, where he saw people had to walk or ride public transit just to reach a meal, so he turned a school bus into a mobile food pantry, raising $14,000 and fitting it with shelves, food warmers, and coolers for his Eagle Scout project. He identified an unmet need, designed a workable solution, and carried it through to completion. Admissions readers recognize this as initiative in its clearest form.

Leadership

Zoe Elsas, a senior at Vintage High School in Napa, California, has led a student-run donation drive for the South Napa Shelter for two years. In November 2025 she expanded it to five more campuses, collecting more than 3,000 personal care items that classmates packed into backpacks. Admissions readers measure leadership by influence instead of titles. They ask questions like “Did others act because of you?” Zoe rallied classmates around a shared goal and expanded the effort across the district.

Three students, three different strengths, one thing in common: each created something that didn’t exist before. Hours get counted, but what a student builds gets remembered. That is the true meaning of Spirit in IvyBoost’s 4S Profile Method™.