To get to Harvard, go to Haiti?

Essays about expensive “service trips” to exotic countries seldom impress colleges. “In the case of drive-by charity work, the checked box can actually be counterproductive, because application readers see right through it. ‘The running joke in admissions is the mission trip to Costa Rica to save the rain forest,’ [says] Ángel Pérez, who is in charge of admissions at Trinity College in Hartford.” Read on!