Are my extracurriculars good for super competitive colleges?

Applying to College
1

PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I COULD IMPROVE ON (I know I have little time)
I’m currently a High School Junior.

Awards:
Silver Medalist of the annual Youth Japanese Haiku Competition (held at Japanese school, 9th grade)
Gold Medalist of the annual PTSA Reflections Contest (Music Composition Division, 11th grade)
Candidate and Alternate for the American Legion Boys State
Competed in many music composition competition, including the NAfME Young Composers Competition
Student Awards from AP US History and AP Chemistry (So far that are confirmed)
National Honor Society
California Scholarship Federation
Aiming for AP Scholar

Extracurriculars:
Music Business Founder and President (10~): composed original orchestral compositions, built business from scratch by promoting my music through Instagram, Soundcloud, and Youtube, designed my own website from scratch, connected with people in and outside my school who likes my content, collaborated with my tennis coach, who is also a former DJ

Music-Psychology Research (still in-progress)(11): self-conducted research showing which genres of music affect the human brain a certain way; composed 10 different genres of music and had close relatives, friends, and teachers complete a certain task while listening to them; recorded data; working on publishing research pretty soon

Music Composition (8~): half self-learned and half lesson-learned the piano, self-taught the music theories of over 20+ genres of music, ranging from classical to baroque to hip-hop, entered many composition competitions; performed piano piece for an annual elderly home event, was nominated as a temporary composer for the school video bulletin

Summer Internship at the Torrance IT Department (11, 5 weeks): replaced all phones in the district’s schools with new CISCO phones, deployed new image to laptops and desktops for the schools, deployed new equipment in different classrooms, helped breakdown and setup computer labs, assisted with cable management projects, configured client server terminals

Founder and President of Patients in Need Club (11): raised awareness for the patients in poverty; conducted fundraisers to raise money for a local hospital; created brochures and posters to raise awareness for the patients; conducted clothes-drives, food-drives, and book-drives for the patients

Vice President of the Junior Society (11): worked with the Patients-in-Need program at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center; raised over $7000 for the less fortunate patients at the hospital; held meetings every other Friday and assisted the president and other officers in conducting the meetings; assisted and co-conducted monthly fundraisers, events, and group-bonding events

Internship at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (11): {assigned various duties} shadowed a doctor for a month, assisted visitors to the hospitals in the ER-Triage department, guided injured patients from the urgent care department to the cast room and X-ray room, delivered patients’ specimens to the laboratory, worked as concierge and led confused visitors to the appropriate locations, filed important employee health documents, assisted the blood donor department, managed office phones

Varsity Tennis (9~): self-conducted a donation to better the condition of the courts (our courts are EXTREMELY dirty); raised over $500 so far, listened to everyone’s concerns about the team and typed up a proposal to the coaches for potential changes (this proposal alone led to better drills, better weekly schedules, and better organization in terms of lineups), participated in annual varsity matches

Founder of Japanese-English Tutoring Service (10~): designed an original website, connected with two Japanese schools with the help of my parents and my AP Japanese teacher, tutored English via facechat and message, toured a group of Japanese ambassadors around the school campus

National Honor Society (11~): tutored students in various subjects, ranging from Biology, Chemistry, Algebra, to Calculus

Working on Currently:
Programming a mobile app
Write a score for the school band

Planning to do (or WAS planning to do):
MIT Launch X: still waiting for interview and letter (90% sure I’m denied)
UC Davis Young Scholars Program: waitlisted; still waiting for letter (iffy)
Red Cross Summer Internship Program: haven’t submitted my form yet
Quarter Zero Catapult Incubator: haven’t submitted my form yet
Enter more music competitions and math competitions

School Info:
Location: California
Rank: Unranked, very uncompetitive (only offers around 14 APs)
Type: Public
Population: 2500-ish

Academics so far:
APs taken: World History (5) ← was the only one offered for Fresh/Soph years
APs taking now: US History, Calc BC, Chemistry, Eng. Lang, Jpn. Lang
GPA so far: 3.96 (UW), 4.67 (W)
Class rank so far: 6/502
SAT: 1450 (planning to retake)
SAT II: Math II 720, Chemistry 700 (planning to retake)

2

Reread your post and you have your answer

3

Your ECs are good if they add up to you being a compelling candidate. Can you think of what they have in common, what each one shows about you, what

You have a lot of activities listed. When it comes time to write your essays and ask for your letters of recommendation, which teachers are you going to ask? What aspects of your character do you want to highlight to your schools?

Have you picked the super-competitive colleges that you are applying to? Hint, they are not all the same. Read their mission statements. Do any of your activities highlight a side of your personality or character or intellect that dovetails with the persona of your super-competitive college?

If you had answers to the previous paragraph, then that is what you should focus your essay on and that is what you should be focusing your efforts on in the coming months.

I have read about plenty of kids with equal or lesser ECs who got in to Ivies, in the results pages in the Ivy League section, You have done some good things. What you need to do now is take what you’ve done and see how it can be used in your application.

Top schools don’t accept or reject extracurriculars, they accept or reject an application. ECs are good enough if they can be used to make your application shine.

4

These ECs are incredible!

5

They seem solid. One listed said you raised 7K for an activity ( was that you alone or the entire group?) Alone great, as part of a group you would need to cite your role. I think most of your activities are school based, there are a few Boys State which are state wide ( that’s better). If you get into Boys state/MIT programs that is impressive. These are typical strong ECS for a strong student not outstanding. Tough to tell on the Japanese awards are they local ( school based, regional?)
Really strong Ecs are state based, national based or even world level. To be a competitive applicant to a super competitive school you really need to have at least a strong state based award ( even that really isn’t going to cut it). I would polish off the Japanese aspect of your ECs and try to position some awards in that category in a state/national level.

6

On your application and/or essays, you will need to expound on the music business and composition ECs to give some context and scale. Anyone can have a “business” by putting something up for sale—you must actually HAVE sales for it to mean anything legitimate. Two kids can describe their YouTube Channel by describing their content and how hard they work—but the one with 12 subscribers (including their family members) is a fraud and the one with 1 million subscribers doesn’t even need to go to college to be successful. I am reminded of kids who claim to have written three novels, when actually what they did was write a few hundred pages of awful Big Bang Theory fan fiction. You will need to really polish your descriptions to make sure you convey an accurate depiction of your work.