wtidad

Students - please chill about ECs. For the best colleges, it's not really a quantitative thing. In fact, my informed suspicion is that at the very best colleges, there is healthy disdain for the eager-beaver list-makers who try to show that they have joined (or in some cases led) every activity there is.

Not to say that true leadership, or achievement, or dedication is not valued - it certainly is. But, seriously folks, there are only so many hours in a day, and I don't think you're scoring any points with Harvard by showing that you're the world's greatest mindless multitasker.

I can assure you they'd rather have a kid who's focused and dedicated to something (almost anything, in fact); the swimmer above is a good case in point. I think kids can go awfully wrong when they jump on every "must do" EC bandwagon, because they have heard it's needed for top-college admissions. In fact, in recent years, there has been a backlash by jaded admissions officer - even though they may be responsible for stoking the notion that their preferred student is a squash-playing Mother Teresa with a 4.0, they are actually weary of reading essays entitled "How my summer in a mud hut in Bolivia taught me that all people are the same" Sorry to be so cynical, but I stand by my perceptions on this issue.

Again, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do any particular thing - it just means you shouldn't do it just to stack up more activities on your resume. Because, at some point, your motivation (or lack thereof) will become transparent, and the effect with be neligible, or even negative. So go do something you love, and quit trying to game the system. It's a good lesson for life.