<p>Students also are expected to take advantage of options to create opportunities for themselves.</p>
<p>Understandably, if a student has major responsibilities to their family such as having to work in a family business or babysit siblings each evening after school, they would not have been expected to do the kind of ECs and community service that students without such responsibilities do.</p>
<p>However, if a student is, for instance, a club officer, the student would be expected to have had some kind of impact with that office, not to have simply used it for resume dressing as many students of all kinds do (and then are surprised when top colleges are not impressed enough to accept them despite their list of empty offices).</p>
<p>In addition, well off students who attend top high schools don’t get credit from admissions for doing things that were basically placed into their hands: going abroad on community service trips paid for by Daddy; touring in school music groups that are funded by the school district or parents. Admissions officers at top colleges are interested in students who have the passion about ECs or academics (including getting to college) so much that they go above and beyond what’s available.</p>
<p>Such students could impress admissions officers less than would a low income, first generation student who lives with their grandmother, shares a bedroom with three siblings, lives in the projects, has to babysit their sibs after school yet manages to be valedictorian and to have good scores.</p>