“Tutored underprivileged kids”. I don’t want to hear this EVER AGAIN
Frankly, in majority cases, I have found this to be total and compete BS. So, unless a person has genuinely done good work in this area, please spare trying to create optics of community involvement. In India, community involvement is not a major part of the predominant culture and in a majority of the cases it is neither encouraged by most families nor actively taught by the school system. So, waking up after you start thinking about an MBA overseas is not going to count for much.
Instead of trying to manufacture “certificates” at the last moment, you need to start thinking about it a bit in advance. I personally never did much work in this area before I went for my MBA! How I got heavily involved once I was at the school and afterward is a story for another day. Instead, I rode motorcycles and loved photography. So, I crafted my story around these areas.
So, if you have time at your hand. Get involved with some organizations in a significant and meaningful way early on. You may end up discovering some great new aspects of life that you may not have taken into consideration before. Of course, writing MBA admissions applications is a great opportunity to take a stock of your life and plan for the future (See my article here about it in the Top MBA Admissions series).
As they say the best time to plant a mango tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is NOW. So, get started on this journey now.
However, if you are planning to apply to business schools in the short term, see what activities you already participate that demonstrate that you are a multifaceted individual and can bring your work in the areas to fore. For instance, for one of my students, we crafted a story around his hobby of playing poker. He had some great amateur accomplishments. This was not even on his radar while planning his applications. We explored this further and crafted whole essays around his perspective on life, dealing with people, risk assessment and much more gained from him playing poker. I almost had to play the psychologist to get these perspectives out of him. It was not always easy, but we stuck with it and the result was that this person is headed to his top choice school!