<p>Are school activities and formal leadership activities inherently better than activities pursued outside of school, less formal interactions with other people, for example?</p>
<p>I’ll admit that there’s more chance in college admissions than I would like to believe, but in my mind it seems that universities looking to admit students who will contribute to their campus are going to try to look for students whose activities (and essays) actually reflect that personality, not how many activities they’re in, not how many leadership positions they have, etc. Who’s to say that out-of-school activities don’t require as much commitment or effort, or that introducing something in school is not a real example of leadership? (needless to say, I also do not support the notion that all applicants with decent grades/scores/ECs are put into a pile with a random number generator xD) The one downside to out-of-school activities that I have is that they’re harder to verify, but if one talks about specific experiences in essays or an interview, there’s a pretty good chance that they know how it’s affected and helped them. There are probably a lot of people who will find what I just said common sense, but you don’t have to go through the whole “Chances” forum to see that it’s not particularly popular.</p>
<p>I realise that my above points are strongly biased in favor of my own experiences (since I get a lot of comments about “lack of leadership”), and some of my questions are probably more of a result of flaws in the structure of chance threads (since, many people who comment on their essays have an irrationally biased view of them and don’t showcase them anyway). And in some ways, my arguments are really one-sided so I’d appreciate what thoughts others have about the importance of school activities in admissions.</p>
<p>And I apologise in advance if this is a silly or offensive question to ask.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about this. The colleges and universities that do care about leadership and extracurricular activities don’t care if those things are school-based or not. Lots of kids do nothing at school but plenty in their community.</p>
<p>And stay out of the Chances forum. It will make you crazy.</p>
<p>i mean it makes some sense because schools want to know how you’ll contribute to their school and not run off somewhere else to do something, if that makes sense</p>
<p>(i have this problem too with my ecs so i feel for you -_-)</p>
<p>My kids did ECs outside of school. Some were organized (scouts, one did some 4H stuff), but others were not. One was an active bug collector (entomology) – she did enter some stuff in the county fair, but the actual collecting was where most of the time was spent. She also entered some art in the fair, and sold a painting at a charity event. One also club fenced, but did not do any competitions until her senior year. D2 did not have any true leadership (no captain or officer positions), although she was a top player on a school academic EC team – and she got into Swarthmore and U of Chicago. I don’t think colleges are out to “verify” much anyway, they generally do take your word for it. But if the activity is truly unstructured and you have no real accomplishments/output to show for it, it can be hard to put that on a college application.</p>
<p>It is hard to give you advice on this if you are not more specific on what your actual ECs are, though.</p>
<p>When colleges say they are interested in leaders, many students and parents assume Admissions are looking at your EC’s to discover what leadership qualities you may have. And sometimes they are. But, more often than not, as colleges are academic institutions, they are looking for leaders in the classroom. They are looking for students who not only contribute to the classroom conversation, but dynamically lead the discussion. They are looking for students who constantly raise their hands and have thoughtful opinions. Colleges are looking for your teachers to confirm your leadership qualities in their recommendation letters with concrete examples. It’s not about leadership in EC’s, it’s leadership in the classroom!</p>
<p>To intparent: Most of my activities involve competitive programming and math competitions (or solving related problems), or programming projects that I do on my own, somewhat informally. None of them are completely unstructured or intangible. However, a large part of all the activities I mentioned (what I find most meaningful) comes mainly from just talking through everything with other people. This is something I’d like to come out in essays, perhaps, but there is a part of me that is afraid of such anecdotes being put aside.</p>