Extracurriculars for homeschoolers

Bozusaki
Sat, 30 Jul 2016 23:58:20 +0000

I’m a rising senior and my notable extracurriculars thus far:

Year-round volunteering for a local (fairly prestigious) film festival (Started junior year, ongoing)

100+ volunteer hours at my local county clerk’s office that turned into a year long paid internship (Started freshman year, ended junior year)

Member of a local high school competitive programming team (Started junior year, ongoing)

Attended a two week, residential competitive programming camp at a state university this summer (on scholarship!)

Several white collar part-time jobs, with the most notable being as a regular content contributor for a fairly successful online tech/business/gaming website (Started junior year, ongoing)

Served as editor for a local literary magazine aimed at teenagers (Started freshman year, ended sophomore year)

Regularly participate in online programming competitions on websites like Codeforces, Codechef, etc (Started junior year, ongoing)

I say “notable” because those are the main things that I think I could write extensively about if I had to. I have a lot of other miscellaneous stuff (HUNDREDS of hours volunteering at different libraries since I was a freshman, tutoring jobs here and there, member of a few organizations through my virtual school, volunteering for my mom’s non-profit) that I don’t think are as impressive/significant, as well as some more “recreational”, off the books kinds of things (cycling, computer building, creative writing), and also stuff that I did a really long time ago (those other part-time jobs)

If you don’t mind me asking, what grade are you in? I’m guessing rising sophomore based on what you wrote. I think it’s important to note that, especially for homeschoolers, finding extracurricular activites to seriously devote yourself to can take time. I think I’ve done a pretty respectable amount of stuff out of the “classroom”, but a lot of those things took a long time to work up to. For instance, I couldn’t join that programming team until I took APCS, which I wasn’t allowed to take until my junior year. That’s why, if you look at my list, I didn’t do a lot of stuff until my junior year. In my opinion, no one in their right mind would think badly of you if you weren’t able to overcome geographic, financial, or academic obstacles to do something.