"High school students eager to stand out in the college application process often participate in a litany of extracurricular activities hoping to bolster their chances of admission to a selective undergraduate institution.
However, college admissions experts say that the quality of a college hopeful’s extracurricular activities matters more than the number of activities he or she participates in. Experts note that merely participating in an extracurricular activity is not enough to impress admissions committees at prestigious colleges, which typically seek students with significant extracurricular accomplishments in addition to strong academic credentials." …
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2018-10-25/how-colleges-weigh-applicants-extracurricular-activities
The greatest pitfall, in my opinion, regarding the extracurricular involvement among high school students, is the focus on quantity vs. quality/creativity. Not being endowed with a particular “pointy” EC, a typical student overwhelms his/her schedule with all sorts of EC’s and in the process suffer the burn out. In some cases, even with a well established “pointy” EC, a student finds the constant need to fill his/her schedule with more activities. That’s the kind of competitive environment we now have for entrance to highly coveted colleges. This article offers a useful perspective on what EC’s one should participate in. A flurry of a mere garden variety EC’s won’t get you anywhere except to drain all the energy even before the college starts.