Importance of Extracurriculars?

spatel23
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:02:46 +0000

oh and i thought that my EC’s seemed awesome that’s why I got admitted
lolz, my EC’s were pretty much senior year [1 was junior year, and Sanskrit was from sophomore year], but i guess it depends on each student.

For me, i had 1) self learning Sanskrit; 2) HAL: Physics Club; 3) Robotics; 4) Poetry [was a branch of the large whole club, 5) Indian Club!!

In my opinion, i think that your EC’s tell more about you. I mean, when I was deciding my EC’s I had to rethink each EC over, and I kept changing them, because it didn’t give me the look I wanted.

Here I was, outstanding GPA, many AP classes, Average SAT score/SAT II, ELC status, major: Pharm. Chemistry.

If your EC’s show that you are continuous, it shows passion, dedication, and stuff like that.

For me, on the other hand, since all my E.C’s were fairly recent, it shows that the person is changing [positively speaking. One can note that “self learn Sanskrit” might show how lonesome he is, and Indian Club seems to be of only his “kind”, but senior year, hmm we have various clubs, interesting…]

To wrap things up, this is your “profile” and the entire point is to make those admission officers open their eyes at the site of your application and be like “Wow”,
Yes many of your EC’s will be outstandingly awesome, yet at the same time many people will have the same thing. One thing I love OT mention is Nation Honors Society. Yes that is a great org. and yes it would be awesome to be a part, but I never took interest, and I never joined. I could have joined for the sake of putting it on my app, but then i thought of all those people in NHS, they will most likely put NHS on their app, so that’s one less difference b/w me and them. They used up one spot with NHS, I still have one slot open for something that I think might be better NHS.

This isn’t to lead you astray or anything and start crossing off all the popular orgs/clubs you have. But I’m just saying, if you think that you have something better than one of your orgs, that will make you stand out even more, you go with that one.

So i think, [god dammit, i have a habit of writing long posts on CC] I think that the best thing for you to do is focus on the E.C.'s that make you stand out. That show who YOU are, who YOU want to be. If you want to major in Chem. then yes I think that it would be nice to have some Chem related E.C., but does it matter: Not if you think it doesn’t.

And that is the answer to your question, It doesn’t matter what E.C’s you put as long as you think that they have some significance to them.

[with that said, don’t fake E.C.'s or join them for the sake of it. That’s just mean. Make them genuine and yes, I did get into UCSD :)]