I’m participating in my school’s Forensics club this year (starting as a sophomore). The club says that participating in forensics is a major factor in college admissions. How true is this? I have good academic standing and I intend to apply to several prestigious universities (Yale, Brown, maybe Oxford, etc.), so I’m wondering if this will increase my chances in any significant way. And yes, I am doing the club because I genuinely want to, not just for college apps.
Any one club isn’t going to be a major factor in elite college admissions, but it’s great that you’ve found an activity you enjoy.
Agree with traveler98. As for any one club “being a major factor” – that’s advertising puffery. Think of “Axe” commercials where the teen dude sprays some on his body and a load of babes magically appears.
Same thing.
Adcoms do like to see forensics as an ec, as public speaking and debate are great skills to develop and useful in college and life in general. And doing well with winning competitions is even better. It certainly would be a more valued ec than lets say knitting club. But it’s not going to make up for scores and stats that are not up to par for the school
for elite schools being a member of a club is not really going to be much help. Win some awards in the club, take part in leadership, that’s what your competition is doing.
That is bs
That’s pretty funny, actually. A for effort on the part of the Forensics Club.
That is an untrue claim. Traditional clubs that are viewed positively by adcoms are Model UN, Mock Trial, Debate, yearbook, newspaper, and many many others, etc… Any EC, if the student enjoys it and is involved, is good. A job is good. Volunteering is good. Taking care of family members is good. What’s not good is doing nothing.
Unless you are Malala Yousafzai, an EC is not going to get you into college. Have fun at Forensics Club, sounds cool.
EC’s are secondary in importance to things like GPA, test scores, course rigor, etc.
Just to clarify, is the Forensics Club a speech and debate club or a club for using scientific techniques to detect and solve crimes? I’m assuming it’s a speech & debate club but maybe I’m wrong! (The National Forensic League finally changed its name after about 90 years to the National Speech & Debate Association because nobody uses forensics to mean speech and debate any more.)
Assuming the OP means speech and debate, then it can mean a lot or a little (or nothing) depending on what you do with it. My S was heavily involved in speech and debate in high school. She knew quite a few classmates who listed the speech and debate team as an EC when they only attended one tournament and a couple of meetings. By contrast, my D was a finalist at many tournaments, qualified to Nationals for three years and qualified to Tournament of Champions. If you join the National Speech & Debate Association, you participate in their honor society and you accumulate points based on how many tournaments you attend, how many events you do (she did public forum debate, congressional debate, oratory, and impromptu), and how well you score at those events. So there is some objective basis for demonstrating your commitment and achievement.
@mikemac when you say that is bs
@lindagaf when you say it’s pretty funny anf give the club and A for effort
read this article - this is likely what the club is referring to
https://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/Luong%20AdmissionsNov’00.pdf
just one of the lines from this article
"Extracurricular activities like forensics
are playing an increasingly important role
in the college admissions "
@wisteria100 Thanks for that link. My D’s debate club would hand out copies of that article at the freshman club rush to try to recruit new members. So yes, I think the OP’s club was making the point that speech & debate can be an impressive EC if done with commitment, hard work, and ideally success.
@wisteria100 , I learn something new everyday, thanks. I wasn’t aware that this is what forensics means. I was thinking it was a forensic science club. Happy to admit I am a ninny.
Here’s somebody’s explanation of why speech and debate is called forensics. Basically, because of Aristotle. http://www.forensicscommunity.com/forum/forensics-waitdo-you-mean-csi
I previously believed that debate (forensics) was a particularly valuable EC but my understanding of its value for admissions has lessened over time. I agree that it’s better than the knitting club (disrespect to knitting not intended) and personally I believe it’s great preparation for college and life in general. It’s a great EC. If you enjoy it, keep it up, but don’t expect it to make you stand out in a unique or particularly strong way. Good luck!
The WSJ article Luong relies on was published in 1999. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB924216969441458339 Perhaps not quite up to date?
Reading the article one notes “Three top schools – Georgetown University, Penn and Swarthmore College – made up to ten years of background data on applicants available to us.”
So this was not an in-depth analysis across top colleges but relies critically on how representative admissions from 1989-1989 at these 3 colleges are to college admissions today. Hmmm
But aside from the difficulties of using stale data from a small sample set, there is a deeper problem. The WSJ analysis looks like it attributes all of the boost in admit rates to the factor being examined. Almost as good as debate captain is playing squash. It seems likely that debate and squash and crew (another biggie) are proxies for something else. Class. What kind of schools offer these activities? Might they be tony privates or schools in upper-income areas? It seems as likely that the WSJ is measuring nothing more than the well-known advantage of coming from privileged environment and attributing it to the proxy they measured. They might as well tallied Volvo ownership.
@mikemac
Agree the data is old and that forensics is not a magic ec bullet for admissions (though those who place well in national competitions will stand out a bit)
Disagree with your musings on class and high income kids participating. Forensics attracts kids from all types of schools, in fact in my area a lot of lower class kids from charter and catholic and parochial schools do exceptionally well and have gone on to win at the state, regional and national level. Forensics requires time and commitment, but not money and fancy equipment. Forensics is definitely not a rich kid activity.
Agree that forensics is not a magic bullet. But it’s a wonderful EC activity, and not just for the winners and tippy-top students. In fact it can be extremely beneficial for the shy, average student. As for whether it’s a rich kid activity, I’d say yes and no. In our state, the top teams are a parochial school and a public school. What both have that distinguishes them from others are school administrations and boosters that provide significant and consistent support, especially paid coaches. My D’s team only had a faculty mentor, not a professional coach, but D and her partner still won state one year. On the other hand, to compete on the national circuit you generally need to be able to afford to travel to out of state tournaments, and that obviously sets up a financial hurdle. The national circuit is more dominated by private prep schools than is the local circuit.
Agree with others. It is a perfectly nice EC and if you enjoy the club then by all means stay involved. But it is a relatively common activity and certainly won’t clear the path to admission to an elite college.
@Corinthian - great link, thanks.
Debate is a great activity regardless of college applications.
For it to matter for admission at Yale, Harvard, Amherst, you must be a champion. Overall, your ec is only a plus of our can demonstrate impact.
D did public forum and congressional debate. From her own public high school during the time she was there, she had teammates and local friends/acquaintances from neighboring schools that ended up at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Wellesley, Tufts, Vanderbilt (these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head) These were kids that were good enough to make it to nationals but not the actual first place champions. They were also the kids who were the honors kids, the academic stars at their respective high schools. If they hadn’t done debate, they would’ve excelled in some other EC. If you look at the list of nationals champions and google where they ended up its full of HYPS and other top schools. Also don’t forget that forensics includes speech, and the speechies also do very well.
No (reasonable) EC that you like can hurt you. Since you think you might like forensics, give it a whirl and see if you do. If not, that’s okay too. Don’t keep doing it just to pad the EC list. You will do better getting involved in an EC where you have actual passion (“better” here means—you will be happier, you will accomplish more in that area, it will help with college admissions more). But are there some ECs that some colleges might prefer? I’m sure that’s true (knowing what those ECs are for a particular school, in a particular year? Impossible, imo). For example, my son loved quiz bowl and did quite well in it. He would not have done well if he didn’t like it and enjoy the time he put into it. Back to forensics—try it out!