Sounds a bit arrogant. I’d stick to just talking about your interest in their athletic programs.
These are pretty good ECs, right?
Varsity golf 3 years - captain 12th
Varsity tennis 3 years - captain 11th & 12th
World Language Honor Society - 11 & 12 - VP 12
Physics olympics 11 & 12 - event leader 12
FBLA - 10,11,12
Mu alpha theta & NHS - 12
Student-athlete council representative for golf (12) and tennis (11,12)
Is it best to make your common application essay about an EC so that you can highlight it? Or does it need to be a more personal matter. Does anyone know how much weight in general colleges give to the common app essay compared to their supplementals?
do you think colleges would be more interested in an applicant who has fewer EC that they are really passionate about, or an applicant who does a ton of EC that they don’t care about and only do to look good for college?
or can they even tell the difference?
With so many highly qualified and talented students applying to the top schools it is indeed difficult to stand out from the crowd these days. For an ambitious student that wants to have the greatest chance of getting into their top choice school, I would recommend that students create a strong online presence. An increasing number of admissions officers are using the Internet to find out more about their applicants, so putting in a little effort to stand out online is a great idea.
First off, most students already have a Facebook which is a good place to start. Make sure that your Facebook profile shows you in your best light (make sure to remove anything that might be questionable to the admissions officer). Your Facebook profile has a designated place to put a personal bio as well as your interests and activities. Also create a LinkedIn profile which boasts most of the same general features you need as Facebook. These are great places to put up all sorts of information to convince the admissions officer you are the best candidate.
Facebook and LinkedIn are both optimized to rank highly in search engine results, meaning that all an admissions officer has to do is search your name in Google and your information will be in front of them in mere seconds. Emurse.com is less well known than Facebook or LinkedIn, but is still highly effective at increasing your presence in cyberspace.
Basically put as much positive information about yourself on as many sites as possible. The three sites that I mentioned are great places to start, but there are dozens of other places you can post your info for free as well. If you are interested in more specific information on how to create a powerful online presence please visit my site: cleannameblueprint.com
first post on CC:
so I am applying to schools, and reworked my essay for the third time. I know my grades and scores are not nearly high enough, but my passion for stuff outside of that is very high. I want to convey everything I have done\can do.
My passion is in computers, but I don’t know how to convey that (not to brag too much) I am really on a level far above the usual people who apply with a passion for computers. Right now my essay traces back through all of my computer endeavors from third grade onwards, but as the OP said, does it maybe make more sense to talk about one thing on the computer? I don’t think I have any small project of any conveyable meaning to colleges.
^If you don’t have a project that conveys your “passion” for computers, I’m not sure colleges care. They want to see accomplishment, not nebulous “passion.”
bummpppp!!!
goodnamesgone:
My daughter is now a sophomore at UC Berkeley. Her major is environmental molecular biology. She came from a very small town, had a 4.5 GPA, had some AP classes, no extra curricular activities other than a lot of volunteer work, and didn’t do very well on her SAT score, only got 1750. However she impressed the Berkeley admissions with her essay. They must have seen something out of the ordinary that they liked about her. Everyone is “into” computers these days, you have to be. I would focus on something about you that is way “out of the box” and it doesn’t have to do with college or learning at all. Good Luck!
As an alumni interviewer at a Top 10 School, I’ve always been super impressed by applicants who’ve taken the time to volunteer abroad and made a real, demonstrable impact overseas. I think it shows a lot of guts to travel to a foreign country in a setting you’ve never been to before and help those who belong to a totally different culture than you. Adcoms definitely appreciate students who bring a global perspective and they’re looking for folks who demonstrate a pattern of being involved.
With that said, your volunteer experience should still fit in with your overall story - i.e. if you you state your goal is to be a doctor, your volunteer experience should ideally be medicine or compassion- related. A one-off volunteer abroad trip with no other supporting activities that doesn’t tie into your overall story probably won’t do much for you (in my opinion at least).
I hope no one misconstrues my post to mean you have to volunteer abroad to impress adcoms or your interviewers. It’s expensive to travel abroad and it’s definitely not the only way to demonstrate impact in your application. This is just one particularly impressive EC that always stands out in my mind.
This is a repost from another thread but..
URGENT Question (it’s urgent for me at least): if I have been involved in martial arts for over 10 years and I am a high rank black belt and instructor, BUT I do not get ANY community service hours from vounteering and teaching there (I thought it was only my school but apparently it’s supposed to be like that) SO I have like no hours from there and my community service hours are 100-200 hrs, is that a “good EC” for Ivies? I mean I spend about 10 hours a week there, taking classes and helping out, but I didn’t know if I should continue doing so because I really need that time for school work as of now. I really love it but I don’t want to pursue it so rigoriously if it does not count for anything NOT because I’m obsessed with getting into college but because I am getting absolutely NO SLEEP. (It takes 30 minutes to go there and 30 minutes to come back) I’m involved in a lot of activities related to taekwondo at my high school as well but they’re not exactly “community service” or stuff like that. I started a club and do the sport because it is offered at school but please tell me if it is worth putting so much time into volunteering if I do not get any credit (I have volunteered since sixth grade for no credit–I am not complaining but I just need a reality check because I know that I need to spend time on other activities that I NEED to apply for college).
Help please?
Just because your school doesn’t think it’s community service doesn’t mean it isn’t. I’m pretty sure all colleges would look at that description and call your activity community service. (That doesn’t answer your question, since I don’t know, but yes you do get credit for it in applying to college, no less [although also no more] than any other activity.)
Am I the only one who didn’t care about colleges when doing extracurriculars and only did what seemed fun and interesting? I ended up doing plenty of them and being really involved, but that had nothing to do with colleges.
My ECs ending up helping me choose a major, not vice-versa.
Quick question… maybe: I’m currently 22 and on my 4th semester of community college. I started late due to work and not wanting to waste money on my uncertainty. I’ll have around 40 credits at the end of this semester and a GPA of around 3.5-3.6.
My high school performance was lackluster, as was my ACT, and I never took the SAT. I figure I’ll take one or two more semesters at the community college to reach junior status and finish an associates. My GPA dropped last year due to me being pre-occupied with my father; an intense opiate addiction surfaced and he tried to quit cold turkey, he began seizing and I was forced to perform basic medical procedures and keep him conscious. There’s more to the story, but this whole ordeal was eye opening, traumatic, and cemented my interest in med school.
Anyways, my EC’s are scant at best and I was wondering if this whole ordeal mentioned above, which I could most definitely expand on, would be worth mentioning when it comes to EC’s/Essays if I were to apply to somewhere like University of Michigan (in-state) for something like Biology.
Thanks.
Your ordeal with your father would be worth mentioning in your essays to explain your motivation to pursue medicine and study bio. However, that ordeal by itself will not make up for a lack of ECs.
I was gonna try to volunteer at a hospital over the summer and/or shadow a few doctors. Hopefully that will count for something.
It definitely does in that it shows a demonstrated interest in becoming a doctor, though they are pretty vanilla activities for pre-med types. Have you considered more exotic activities like volunteering abroad or engaging in research? One of the applicants I interviewed spent two weeks volunteering overseas- it doesn’t end up being overly expensive if you’re able to successfully fundraise.
To pdxsuzanne:
Not sure why someone would omit cheerleading if that was their passion. If you cheered all 4 years on the varsity level and was captain - not following why this would be regarded in a negative way. Daughter also cheered on an Allstar team ( national & international level), coached and worked with underprivileged school with their cheer program.
She also participated in key club, NHS, yearbook editor among other clubs.
Has been accepted to top tier schools - I think it’s ok to mention cheerleading.
I find the idea that students volunteering abroad are impressive to be very disconcerting. Often these students are wealthy and have had every advantage possible. They volunteer abroad to check if off the list. Track the rest of their trips. France, Germany, 4 Star hotels, first class flight to an impoverished area where they contribute less in time than the possible benefits of simply donating the cost of the airfare. There is plenty of need right here. Better would be to accept more of those students who would be the recipients of help in this country-those who can’t afford a 4 star hotel in France on route to a poor neighborhood where they intend to spend 6 hours with a hammer. How much better it would be if wealthy entitled high school students were less willing to jet to cool places to check a box “good person” and more willing to paint their neighbor’s home that they noticed was peeling and in disrepair due to unfortunate circumstances in their own neighborhood. No need for a night at a 4 star hotel for that help. Not so impressive? I beg to differ! Few students contribute more to a community they fly to than they spend on the luxuries they are used to. Show me one who gave up the luxuries-donated the money their parents were willing to pay for a Lexus-that student is much more worthy of the one taking in the Islands before hammering a few boards.
Sorry to be adding to a thread already filled with almost 70 posts but…the whole EC thing is simply absurd. The category is simply to allow students to report the other important things in their lives. The idea that admissions counselors check to see how many of this and that you have done is just absurd. Also, passion for passion sake is also absurd. And most of these brag posts fall into the same category. The application is intended to provide enough information to tell colleges about who you are. Some people will be passionate about just the right things. I’m not sure how a college would read passion for cheer leading, for instance. But, the student may be very attractive to a competitive college if there was evidence that the same student was an outstanding scholar, well liked and highly motivated. If accepted, I doubt it would be on the basis of cheer leading passion. Compare that to a student who has spent her spare time for the last few years building a prototype of a car that uses an alternative energy source. Her grades are not outstanding but her car is up for all kinds of awards. She shows brilliance but not As in APUSH. Well, a smart college will grab her. She does not have to write about passion! Now if she flunked all her courses because she could not parallel process and was more dedicated to the car–a different outcome. I feel really sorry for students who join a bunch of clubs and even spend their holidays jetting off to paint boards after floods–when they are doing it to enhance their college application. College is only 4 years and childhood is only once. If what you really would love to be doing is not exactly what will sell well to a college-so what? Better to focus on what you believe to be important to you. Go for it. If you can do that, you will thrive anywhere. And, if that means Hofstra not Harvard—I’d put money on your making the most of Hofstra. The alternative is spending your life doing what you think others want to see–and you will spend college doing the same for graduate school. What a crappy way to have a life.