sak09

This summer, I'm going to be doing genetics research in a lab at URI. Also, I will be in Cali for a couple of weeks interning at a biomedical research company.

Now, obviously these aren't my only ECs. However, since I am interested in biology, they probably will be emphasized the most. Anyway, my question is...how will this look on my application? Will it set me apart from the thousands of others that apply to top schools?

m0baik01

okay, right now i only have three real dedicated subjects: violin, guitar, and tennis. I know I need more and some say i should join soccer again next year. Ive stuck with it for awhile but i absolutely hate it and im terrible at it. I also have the option of starting up math olympiad and chess next year but i haven't been as dedicated with it through my high school years so i don't know if colleges will accept it. If possible i want to avoid doing soccer but still get a good amount of ECs. Can anyone help me?

_Silence

Yes Quantity's always better than Quality, and joining a EC you dislike will definitely help you with College Admissions.

If you are really dedicated to your three ECs that's fine. If not, and you WANT to: take another EC but something you like, Not something you thing the adcoms will like.
If you'd rather start up math olympiad and chess, do so and forget about joining a sport, that is neither something special nor something you enjoy.

soulstealer07

As a hint from someone who was once in your shoes...

Your ECs (as long as you have them), only help build your voice. If you can show the admissions committee what significance your activity has on your life, you have a good EC. The difference b/t a good applicant and a bad one is not the amount of activities he/she joins, but the value each individual one has on one's life.


Just some words of wisdom...

glassesarechic

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!

zfox001

Im just going to throw in my opinion here.
I think that if you show that you are dedicated to something and you aren't doing it just for the sake of your application, it will be considered a good EC. While yes there are students who have already composed symphonies played at carnegie hall, others who have more or less cured a disease, or others who are already published authors, the majority of us aren't these people. Someone who has 1000 hours of volunteer work at one specific place definitely give insight into the character of the person. Even if it is a run of the mill EC, they have taken it to the next level and made it a LOT more than normal.

swoop

I hope I don't get a lot of criticism for this but i have a different philosophy, which somewhat makes this forum obsolete.

You shouldn't be worrying about these petty things such as extracurriculars or even college. I promise you, no matter how passionate you think you are, if your goal or your dream is to go Princeton for college, you will not get there. If your dream is to build and manage a school for impoverished families and Panama, then yes, your genuine efforts will most likely lead you into one of these colleges; but if you set the bar that high, it won't matter where you.

I am not saying that you need to know right now what you want to do; I am a junior and don't have that much of an idea myself, but you should definitely aim higher than just getting into the most prestigious schools. Don't do something because someone else will like it, do something because you love it.

For example, I am learning Chinese and Arabic but my parents are Indian (I was born in the U.S.)... okay so maybe this will look good on apps, maybe not.. I don't care. I picked up these languages because I like drawing and I specifically love the writing styles of these languages. My interest in learning about other cultures, as well as my love for drawing, has led me to aspire to be in the United Nations, so this year I joined the Model UN club at my school. I worked hard all year to get into as many tournaments as I could and learn whatever I could about the actual UN.

So maybe I will go to a community college, maybe I will go London School of Economics, but as long as I enjoy the ride to my goal, it's not going to matter what path i take.

I hope I was able to get my point across.

Just remember, you won't think differently about a guy who went to a third-rate school if he is the one to cure cancer..

momreads

Swoop,

You have your head on straight. I teach, and I see my students just padding their resumes with all sorts of clubs because they believe it looks good. They believe that if you do not play a sport, no college will look at you.

One senior girl said that she did not think my son, who, like you, is a junior, would have any schools wanting him because he did not participate in sports. Never mind that he has stepped to his own beat, excelled in his classes, been in a leadership role for several groups and held a part-time job. He reads all sorts of novels, because he wants to read them, not because they have been assigned. He does what he wants because he enjoys it, not because it looks good. And if he does not go to the big-time school, and he's really some pressure about it from other students and teachers, that's all right, too.

Like you, he will never say that he did not enjoy the ride.

lolcats4

How do you think college would view this as an EC:

I am an administrator for a major Real Time Strategy (RTS) Gaming Website (www.gamereplays.org), that does news, previews and reviews, strategy articles, and a specialty service called "replay reviewing" (hence the name of the website). Players can upload replays, files that can be loaded in game and that replay a past game (sort of like watching past sports games on TV), and get them reviewed by website staff, who will offer critique aimed at improving a player. The service is completely free, as it only requires membership to the website. As you can tell from the fact that revenue from games has already surpassed revenue generated by movies, the games industry is expanding in a huge way, and my website is certainly feeling that impact in the form of increasing traffic, compounding by the fact that our name is getting out their more (the goal being to compete with sites such as IGN.com, gamespot, etc).

How do I come into this? Well, I have helped run the website in numerous staff capacities, most recently as an administrator, for nearly 3 years now. In those capacities, I have learned the ins and outs of website management, website traffic and advertising, and how to recruit and lead a team of staff made up of people from all over the world.

I have also had the fortunate opportunity to come into a high level of contact with a paid employee of EA Games, who's job is to manage the so-called "internet game community." Through this contact, I have helped run a $5000+ game tournament and raise sponsorships for numerous other tournaments that I have personally run (from getting sponsorships, to rules and planning, to advertising, to the actual tournament it-self) each with hundreds of $ of prizes.

I was also invited to attend a global media event prior to the release of the studio's latest title to represent GameReplays.org (the expansion for C&C3, called Kane's Wrath), where EA payed for my flight, food and (luxurious, 5-star, I might add :P) accommodations to come down to LA, CA and play their game long before the public could, as well as offer feedback on it (many of our comments were directly implemented into the game).

Through the website I've also written quite a few feature articles including a game review, and interviewed several of the world's best players.

What I'm wondering is, how do I present this to a college in the best way I can, without making it sound like I spend all day on my computer playing games and internet surfing (which is quite the contrary - I run of of time usually after doing website work and can't play)? I have plenty of other ECs, especially athletic, but I'm still worried as to how I would tell a college about this passion of mine.

SomeGirl

Are my EC's good?

Mock Trial - Attorney
Debate Team
Character Counts
French Club
Key Club
NAACP Youth Council - Treasurer
Amerian Cancer Society - Treasurer
Environmental Club
Track
Cross Country
DECA
Show Choir

Over the summer:
Academy of Law & Leadership
Mock Trial Camp
Blank Park Zoo Volunteer

I want to go to Howard University in D.C. with a 3.05 GPA. Do I have a chance?

bubblemilk

I am only involved with two clubs, however, they're not ordinary clubs like, say, ______ appreciation Club, or <insert Academic class> Club that is created for AP students in the aforemented Academic class in my school.

- Academic Decathlon - rigorous competition that is geared towards testing a well-rounded individual.
- LEO service club - 80 hours/semester. ~3xx hours total

I've accumulated a plethora of medals from Decathlon. (:

Acadec / Scholastic medals
[Various Regional and State Competitions]
- 1st Super Quiz x3 I loveeeeeee Super Quiz.
- 1st Science x2
- 4th Science x1 I still wore that ugly, pink ribbon with pride!
- 1st Literature x2
- 2nd Literature x1
- 1st Art x3
- 3rd Speech/Interview x1
(my math scores were detestable)

Non-Club Activities:
- GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) 3 years
- Various artwork displayed in district VAPA festivals
- freelance 'opinion writer' in school newspaper
- student government/legislative involvement

likeme

Does an internship count as volunteer? I don't have as many volunteer hours as I'd like an I'm interning this summer.

Fuzzylogic2525

@somegirl I relaly think you should look at some of the past posts, like people have said many times earlier, it's not how many activities you have, it's how dedicated you are to them, how much time you spent on it and if the club actually interests you. I think that it is quite impossible to be dedicated to all of the clubs you have listed as we only have so many after school hours lol. So my advice is to pick 2 or 3 clubs that you are really dedicated to and you will be fine. =]

JakeM

How do these look for someone applying to school for FILM:

In my Community Health class, which is an Honors version of health sort of like "peer educators" we took a once a week course on Breast Cancer and Cigarette Smoking's Effect on the Body, and taught it to students and teachers around the school which took up a whole class. For the Cigarette Smoking lesson I edited a video for the presentation.

And how does the New York Film Academy summer program look in regards to ECs?

briefingsworth

This question has been asked a few times, but no one has really answered it. I'm wondering if anyone could give any insight on how foreign language-based EC's are evaluated. Specifically:

--How does it look if you learn a foreign language on your own outside of school/take classes at a local college or community center? Do colleges view this as a substantial achievement? Will they want some sort of proof of achievement if you learn it at an institution that doesn't give grades (local community center, for-pleasure adult ed classes, etc)?

--For those of us not taking Latin and thus unable to get JCL awards, how do colleges weigh similar awards for other foreign languages? AATSP for Spanish/Portuguese, AATG for German, le Concours for French...I've regularly won my division in the state (not a large one) and ranked 3rd, 4th, and 5th nationally in two different languages. Will colleges be impressed by this?


I love foreign languages, and I'll continue to pursue these activities regardless of their pull in the college application process. It's just that they (along with foreign language honor societies, foreign language clubs, and foreign language-oriented volunteering) make up a pretty significant portion of my resume, and I'm wondering how colleges will view that. And it seems as if more than a few other people have asked similar questions (to no avail) in the past.

Thank you!