<p>From the first link mikemac posted:</p>
<p>"List A</p>
<p>Costumer for a school play
Plays three instruments
Has a private language tutor
Has a heavy course load
Member of the debate team
Organizing book fair
Organizing multi-cultural fair
Secretary of the French club
Member of the honor board
List B</p>
<p>Founded and runs his own club
Founded and runs his own non-profit
We begin with List A. The sheer size of this list likely causes massive stress in this poor student’s life. But does it add anything interesting to his story? To answer this question, let’s remember the Failed Simulation Effect…</p>
<p>Failed Simulation Effect: People are impressed by things that are hard to explain, not hard to do.</p>
<p>Apply this logic to List A. Is anything on that list hard to explain? Let me put this another way: is there anything on that list that you couldn’t do if you wanted to? The answer is “no.” Every item, in isolation, is something that anyone could sign up and do so long as he had the hours — or in the case of the language tutor, the money — to devote to it.</p>
<p>Accordingly, the impressiveness of List A is reduced to one thing: this student is able to juggle a large volume of relativity easy activities."</p>
<p>I really disagree with the author. I’ve organized multicultural events, and it took an enormous amount of work as is the case with organizing almost any event. Most adults – from what I’ve seen – lack the social skills, vision and organizational skills to organize such an event. For instance, a teacher at the school had suggested the event at least 5 years beforehand, but until I agreed to chair it, it never happened.</p>
<p>I’ve interviewed students for Harvard, my alma mater, and when students say that they’ve organized an event, my ears perk up and I want to hear more. I can tell who’s lying, who was only a sham organizer because the advisor did all of the work, and I can tell who really did the work. Everyone who organizes an event will run into challenges that they’ll have to overcome. I’ve organized lots of events, and not one time have things gone exactly as I would have expected. </p>
<p>Easy to organize an event-- any event in which one really is the organizer? No.</p>
<p>I also think that judging an EC by whether it’s hard to explain is silly. There are many things that are easy to explain, and are very impressive. There are also ECs that are hard to explain because the student is trying to b.s. and really didn’t do anything or didn’t know what the heck they were doing.</p>