How should I explain my rare extracurricular activity?

Applying to College
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Hello everyone! I hope that I am posting this in the right place. I am very good at an extracurricular too niche to expect college admissions officers to understand.

I’m a highschool student (junior) living in the US hoping to be accepted into a top college. To be honest, I don’t have a great idea of where exactly, but eh, I’ve still got time to think that stuff through.

I don’t think you can exactly be confident in achieving this, but I received my first SAT score yesterday (for the March 9 SAT), and got a 1580. My school doesn’t do class rankings but out of the ~450 kids in my grade, I know I’ve got the highest weighted gpa of 4.46, with an unweighted gpa of something like 3.98, because I got a B first trimester of APUSH in 9th grade hahaha

I’ve taken 6 APs in the past and got meh scores, I’m taking 7 right now and we’ll see how I do

I’ve had mild participation in various sports and clubs at my school, but in terms of well-known extracurriculars, I am very weak. I’ve done a single year of three different sports (with no achievements in them), led the math club but haven’t even made AIME, I’ve done a lot of other random things as well but the point is I haven’t done anything of substance through my school.

Where that changes is several things I’ve done outside of school-sponsored activities. I am in a sport called calisthenics statics, or street workout (SW). I’ve been training SW for 3 years now. for the first 2 years or so, I was very average in it. I watched the popular youtubers and tried to learn from them, and didn’t really improve much but because of how difficult popular youtubers make intermediate skills seem, it felt like I was progressing relatively quickly. The thing that was different between me and most average practitioners of the sport, was that I continuously researched more and more, hungry for information, even though all my information was in retrospect from quite useless sources. Well, after 2 years I lucked out and found a niche community on Discord, with a couple of the best SW athletes in the world, and many athletes who were weaker but still very strong and, more importantly, very knowledgeable.
I soon became obsessed with SW, every second that wasn’t allocated to school was spent doing things related to calisthenics; for some months I trained over 40 hours a week and continued learning about it on top of that, even during classes I would stretch my shoulders because shoulder mobility was a weakpoint of mine, and several other things. I spent many hours learning from the athletes in that server, and eventually I began learning from various other sources. Reading anatomy articles and exercise science studies; finding and reading the couple textbooks related to my sport; learning from other, established sports such as climbing, powerlifting, and even some things from bodybuilding; for a while I progressed very quickly in strength, and even faster in knowledge. I even got arrogant enough to dream of becoming the strongest in the world. I got injured at some point, so my strength didn’t improve much for a while but I kept learning, and learning, to the point that by now, over a year since I started learning so much, I have comparable knowledge in many ways to the people I was once learning from, and more knowledge in other ways, things that I researched more than others because they pertained specifically to me.
Still, only recently have I been able to overcome the cycle of injuries, and since then my main efforts have been in setting myself up to get stronger quickly and safely in the future. Thus, I am not actually strong at all compared to many others in my sport. I can do things like repping out handstand pushups, and the occasional front lever or 90 degree pushup (look them up), and eh, most people would say I’m exceptionally strong, but having been exposed to the elitist culture at the top of the calisthenics hierarchy enough, I know that it isn’t really all that special. I think that by the time I have to send applications, like 8-9 months from now, I’ll be a lot stronger, but I guess these are my problems:

First of all I don’t know how to express my level in my sport, I may not be that strong but I’m still exceptional from the perspective of the average athlete, I mean I tried benchpress recently and solely from carryover from calisthenics, I benched 235lbs while weighing 140lbs. Very good for it just being carryover. My worry is that even if I get way stronger by the time applications roll around, I’ll have no way of demonstrating to the admissions people how strong I am! For example, if I achieve planche, that’s pretty impressive, but how would an admissions officer know what that is and how impressive it is? Do they look it up?
In any case, my strongest trait is not my current physical strength, rather it is the sheer amount of knowledge I have related to my sport that raises my potential above the vast majority. Would it be worth talking specifically about learning about my sport, since that’s more understandable? Or does it sound cringe from their perspective to hear about me learning from a discord server (you could tell me, you heard me describe this just a bit ago)?
In fact, did all this explaining in the first place sound cringe, or would it be worth being the topic of an essay? What about a specific story, such as how I finally overcame my wrist injury? Does it just depend on my writing ability?
One thing I’ve thought of doing to showcase my strength is to upload a couple youtube videos online to a channel with my real name, and either linking it in the application somewhere or just telling them briefly to look it up. I want to make a channel where I upload videos of me speaking deeply on various SW topics anyway; I would just prefer not to have my real name on it. Would linking a channel like that be fine? I guess I could have a pinned video called “college admissions officers click here” without showing my real name anywhere on the channel or video itself and it’d be adequate verification hahahahaha
By the way, I did end up founding a calisthenics club for my school, if that matters at all.
I felt compelled to make this post because although when it comes to classes I’m the best in my grade, others have extra-curriculars they are good at like debate and mock trial, and some people have sports that they go to state for or are in varsity in. Meanwhile everything I’m good at (I didn’t go into my programming ventures here, or all my writings and musings on my religion), I simply refined by myself at home so it’s hard to convey through a short essay. Maybe I conveyed my adeptness at calisthenics adequately to you readers just now, and I should do something similar in an essay? I’m not sure, so I want your feedback!

Sorry if this type of post is not allowed, if it’s a dumb worry, if I should have looked in other places before asking a forum, and all the other things one could be sorry for with a post like this haha.

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Admissions officers will not follow links or look at your channel. You’ll need to describe your activity in your list of extracurricular activities (fitting into the limited space there), and/or in one of your essays.

As for how to describe the activity, I am not sure, but I am sure you will get advice from others here :slight_smile:

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You wrote a lot here - but to answer the question in the title - you should describe your activity, like any other - what it is you do, and what you’ve accomplished, etc.

It doesn’t matter if no one has heard of it or not. It matters if it’s important to you - and if you want to list it on your app. The adcoms will decide if they want to look it up or not - but you needn’t worry, just present yourself accurately.

Here’s a guide sheet if it helps.

Approaching the Activities section (commonapp.org)

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Seems like potentially a good topic for an essay although you don’t want to come off as bragging. Check the prompts and see if you can make it work.

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I love this for an essay also. Being different sets you apart. Doing something and improving yourself over 3 years is key. Doing anything for an extended period of time is key. You don’t need to be part of 10 things. Just 1/2 and being committed is fine.

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So you have a lot to work with here but I would in fact be a little cautious with how you try to frame all this.

Just to begin with, I think a lot of kids think about ECs in basically the wrong way. They want their ECs to be “impressive”, and frankly it is very hard to really impress the AOs at selective colleges with ECs. However, what is more achievable is to have your ECs be “interesting”. And this EC is naturally a good fit to be really interesting, because it is not something a lot of kids do.

OK, so I would personally not worry about trying to explain your “impressive” achievements to AOs. Unless it is easily verified (like you won accredited competitions and such), they likely won’t credit much, and it doesn’t really matter anyway because they are so hard to impress.

But one obvious thing you can and will do is put down the hours/weeks/years for this activity. And a lot of hours over many weeks over many years will immediately signal the depth of commitment, and that is very important.

You should also place this activity high on your list, possibly at the top, which also signals to AOs they should pay particular attention to it as it was particularly meaningful to you.

You should then focus on providing an interesting, informative activity description. This is where the distinction above really matters, because if you try to use that limited space to impress them, it may well end up kinda blah from an interest standpoint. So, try to create a really vivid picture. Feel free to use some very specific terms and numbers. Like, I have no idea what “repping out handstand pushups, and the occasional front lever or 90 degree pushup” means, but it sure sounds interesting. Same with “benched 235lbs while weighing 140lbs”, “achieve planche”, and so on. They can google stuff if they are interested, but even if not terms and details like that convey your enthusiasm and passion.

Last, as others are saying you can think about an essay. But definitely do not make it an extended brag. Pay attention to the prompts and then draw on your experiences to answer the prompt in a really reflective way. Note overcoming injuries in sports contexts are kinda a cliche topic, so maybe focus on something a lot more specific to this activity and therefore unusual and interesting if discussed in an essay.

And my feeling is if you approach all this with the right spirit, not focusing on trying to get credit for “impressive” achievements but instead on conveying your passion for and dedication to an unusually interesting activity, it could work out great.

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Are you thinking of pursuing some aspect of this passion in the future? If yes (eg Sports Medicine, Physical Therapy – undoubtedly there are other paths too) I would include that point if you write your essay on calisthenics.

The fact that it’s not a formally organized activity to me makes it more authentic, which is a strong plus.

I think writing about calisthenics is an excellent idea – it is central to who you are, and is different than most other applicants

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You could choose to write about this activity in your main essay, or not. If you don’t, I would encourage you to use the additional info section to write about this activity in more detail (you get another 650 words in that section.)

I agree with the advice to not brag. Focus on the qualities one needs to be successful in this activity and show how you those qualities. Don’t underestimate the hours you spend on this.

As one of many who reads college apps, I do sometimes look up activities/awards and such that I’m not familiar with. I encourage you to not put links in your app. They are not active/clickable in the CRM software that many schools use to read apps. It’s very infrequent that I would type in all of the characters of a link that an applicant put in their app (not talking about portfolios that were uploaded thru the app.)

Good luck!

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I’m not in admissions, and this mostly echoes what others have said, but I agree that the focus should be on the amount of time you spent (in EC sections) with a short explanation (probably including something about spending time learning/researching and being self-taught). If you write an essay on this, focus on why it’s interesting to you, what you’ve learned about yourself or life more generally, and how you’ll use (or not use) those skills. In general, I don’t think colleges accept someone because they have a black belt in karate, or awards in sports they don’t have in campus - but because it shows tenacity, dedication, focus, etc. You probably want to demonstrate the effort more than the specific result of a weight lifted, skill completed, etc. Good luck!

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What stuck out to me is how you were able to build a community around this unique interest - not focusing on the skills - but putting in the time, finding your people and introducing others to this too.

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Thank you (and others who contributed to this post) for the comprehensive reply!
I see now that I shouldn’t worry about expressing my level in the sport, because yeah you’re right, it’s hard to find SW competitions outside of Europe hahaha. My strong suit is my commitment anyway. Plus, it’ll be a lot easier not to seem braggy this way.
Still, I should mention some specific skills I’ve achieved, because that’s interesting, but don’t have to worry about conveying just how impressive those things are.

Describing the amount of hours I put into it is a bit strange. I had a period where I put in over 40 hours a week for about 6 months, other times I’ve had to slow it down because of school and train around 8 hours a week for a few weeks, other times I trained around 20 hours a week for many months. It’d be a lie to say that for 3 years straight I’ve been training it 40h/week. Also, should I include the hours I’ve put in researching? That has the same problem, where some weeks I may research 10 hours, other times only 1 or 2.
I know that I’ve certainly put in at least 3000 hours total if I sum my training and my research times. Is that a good way to explain it? Or should I just leave it like how I explained it to y’all, with “for some months I trained over 40 hours a week and continued learning about it on top of that.”

I didn’t think of clicheness, you’re right, overcoming an injury wouldn’t work all that well as an essay topic. Maybe I could talk about my journey in achieving a specific skill. If I tried to “paint a picture” like you said, I guess I would at some point in the essay (near the end) say something like “I get into a pushup position, my hands turned outwards to the side. Scapulas protracted and depressed. Posterior pelvic tilt, core engaged and focusing on activating my front delts, I lean forward slowly, more and more, until finally, my feet shakily lift off the ground and hover there for 2 seconds. After multiple years and thousands of hours, I have finally achieved every calisthenics athlete’s first dream. I have finally achieved full planche.” Wow okay did not expect to tear up writing that. I guess whether something like this works depends on the prompt. Just want to know whether it sounds cringe to describe things that way, I suppose.

Thank you for your great advice, you changed my perspective on this greatly :slight_smile:

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So in the Common App you should basically average out your hours per week so the total is right when they do the math. You can explain it is variable somewhere, but my understanding is it really doesn’t typically matter.

As an aside, I think the previous poster was right that the community building part of your story is really interesting. But I think your emotional reaction to what you just wrote is most important of all. It is hard sometimes for kids to get out of trying to figure out what colleges really want to hear, but what they really want to hear is what really matters to you. And so if something like that really matters to you when you write/read it, that is a great sign you are on the right track.

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For hours I think the best anyone can do is just an approximate average. I really hate the way the Common App asks about hours.

For your essay I might just focus on what your sport has meant to you. Do you lose track of time? Have you built a community? What have you learned about yourself? My daughter wrote a gorgeous essay about drawing, how she used it to escape the stressors of life, how she improved her ability and then related her own imperfections to the imperfections of her artwork and then the small improvements that made a huge difference while embracing the imperfectness of it all.

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Unfortunately, since I have many interests, I don’t quite know what I’d like to do yet. I’ve learned a lott about injury rehabilitation, including for sports other than my own since to learn about injuries in my sport I had to extrapolate knowledge from other sports, and learn many general concepts. Thus, sports medicine may work well. It would be so fun to live in an area with a bigger calisthenics presence, and start a gym there coaching people to become some of the strongest in our sport in the world. But, there’s always the opportunity cost of going into other fields I care about. If I ever end up wanting to fulfill my urge to teach (which has always filled me, whether it’s teaching sport or helping people with homework), starting a YT channel on the topic may satisfy that urge, which would be a cool way to contribute to the community and fulfill that passion of mine while also allowing me to pursue something else.
I’m really, really interested in philosophy/religion. I’ve been programming for 4 years and nonmaliciously hacking for almost as long. I love the feeling of solving interesting math problems, it feels just like discovering a vulnerability in a website or game. And I’ve always fancied myself working on optimizing education, and have done a fair bit of research and thinking in that aim as well.
I used to want to be a polymath so I spent all day learning various subjects until slowly I had to cull them as the workload from school got more intense and I started wanting to specialize in calisthenics training. Still, although for a hobby I know calisthenics is my greatest passion, for a job… I don’t know, maybe I’ll go into CS or something.
Okay that was a very long-winded and unnecessary explanation but I’ll leave it I guess. Maybe someone will find a way to make use of it haha

I’m glad that it not being formally organized doesn’t hurt me, because that was a worry of mine, seeing how peers were able to do things like winning state at something while there’s nothing for me to win :sweat_smile:

Thank you for your reply :slight_smile:

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I do sometimes look up activities/awards and such that I’m not familiar with. I encourage you to not put links in your app. They are not active/clickable in the CRM software that many schools use to read apps.

That is good to know! Visually seeing it is helpful in understanding what I’m talking about, I think, but eh, if nothing can be done then so be it.

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It’s ok that you don’t know what to do. That’s what college - and life are for - to explore.

And don’t forget, having an EC you are dedicated to - is great. But many schools don’t track/utilize ECs in their decision and others just want to ensure you’ve done something - with tenure and impact - to show you’ve given of yourself, whether to a team, employer, the community, etc.

So be the best you that you can be - and that will shine through - whether it’s something or “norm” or different.

And focus on your academics - nothing is more important.

Good luck.

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Thank you! I’ll keep this in mind. These replies are all making me see much more easily what a good essay would look like.

Also now I see it’s possible to reply to multiple posts at once, I’ll make use of that haha

@coffeeat3

What stuck out to me is how you were able to build a community around this unique interest - not focusing on the skills - but putting in the time, finding your people and introducing others to this too.

You know, it’s true, I did definitely build a community out of calisthenics. In fact, I briefly mentioned the club I made. Well that club started out as me just noticing a couple of kids in my school’s gym training some basic calisthenics stuff, and helping them out, until I saw that they actually did know of the sport itself and wanted to get stronger. So I coached them for many months without an official club. They ended up being my first real friends in years :slight_smile: I am very talkative, don’t get me wrong I am friendly and well-known to everyone, but I’ve got high standards for who I consider a real, true friend and they ended up meeting those standards. Now, a year later, I’ve gotten an actual club dedicated to our training, have met and trained more people, and have an entire group of friends that stemmed just from this sport! I never considered talking about the community aspect at all! Thank you for that insight.

@NiceUnparticularMan
@Izzy74
I see! Well 3000 hours over 3 years is about 20 hours a week. So then I guess I’ll report it as 20h/week over 3 continuous years, and note variability if that’s possible. Well by the time I fill it out these numbers will change but I get the idea.
This sport does mean a lot to me, a great deal to me actually, to the point that I’m sure that even if I lost an arm I’m sure I’d simply start learning single-arm skills hahaha. And considering I was able to communicate that to some of y’all by accident, I’m sure that I can do it and more thoroughly on purpose.

@tsbna44

So be the best you that you can be - and that will shine through - whether it’s something or “norm” or different.

That’s been my modus operandi from the start! I try not to worry too much about college admissions and making myself the best candidate for them. Frequently, people from my school ask me for advice on things related to college, or even just ask me where I want to go, and invariably, I tell them “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it very much” to which I usually get a response like “Weird, I didn’t expect that of you.” My philosophy has always just been that if I constantly push my limits, and follow what I am passionate about, things will work out. In fact, I’ve probably thought about college too little, which is why now nearing the end of my junior year I’ve been starting to look at the future a bit.

All of your replies have been awesome! I am glad that I chanced upon this forum. Thank you for your advice, and I wish you all the luck you’ve wished me as well!

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I don’t think you should try to explain exactly what the sport is, just that you like it. I read your OP and really, still didn’t understand what it is but did understand that you like it.

And it doesn’t matter what your EC is or if you are good at it (unless you are trying to be recruited or auditioning for a place in the school orchestra), just that you DO something and try to improve at it and enjoy it. You might like cooking but Yale doesn’t care if you’ve opened your own restaurant and received a Michelin star, just that you have an interest that you can write about (and I really think they care more about the writing than the skill level achieved). My daughter could write a great essay about how much she loves hockey, but she’s really bad at it (I mean really bad at it), but the AO wouldn’t know that or care.

The girl who wrote about shopping at Costco? Do you think they cared about her shopping skills? The guy who exaggerated about how he’s scored the winning touchdown, saved the orphans in Africa and cured cancer all while on spring break? It was just a humorous essay that showed his writing skills.

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Please get multiple people, including your English teacher, to give you feedback on your essay.

I see you have interests in Comp Sci, physical fitness, sports medicine, and other areas. Have you ever thought of becoming a physical therapist? It is less competitive than medical school (the route into sports medicine), but does a lot of injury rehab. A lot of intense high school/college athletes wind up going into PT.

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