| Every year, my newspaper includes the senior "stars" of each high school in the region. Under each person's name, they list things like community activities, extracurriculars, college expected to attend.... Most of the kids are obviously very bright--AP scholars, National Merit, athletes--but the profiles for the most part were boring.
The kids with interesting EC's planned to attend a diverse range of schools, from Harvard and Princeton to Chapel Hill to Swarthmore. But the ones who got accepted to those schools weren't always the ones the school had picked as their "Number One Star." They didn't have the typical sport/honor society/instrument/French club (or whatever) arrangement. Some kids were musicians through-and-through. Others showed passion for art and community service. They were involved in things I'd never heard of and didn't have basic things like volunteering at the homeless shelter. They were stars in one thing and decent in another, or else EXTREMELY well-rounded.
What's a good EC is pretty hard to define, but what's a bad EC is pretty easy. Don't be basic, effortless, stereotypical, or fake. Don't make a laundry list--chances are, even if you have only two or three main EC's, you'll be thrown into a few things inadvertently (feel free to join your friend on Thursday afternoons for Art Club, even if you've never picked up a paintbrush). Just please, don't be the kid whose profile bores me on next year's senior stars! |