Is paid work a good EC?

oldfort
Sun, 04 Aug 2013 07:26:28 +0000

OP does not have to waste a whole essay to describe the job. For each EC, there are two lines where an applicant could write about the EC, that’s where I would write a blurb about the job. I would let the adcoms know how many hours and why the job is necessary, but more importantly OP’s accomplishment on the job - “Youngest person to be promoted from cashier to team lead,” “Received a raise after 3 months on the job,” employee of the month," “rewrote the inventory control database during spare time.”

An applicant needs to have good enough stats (tests, gpa) to get a seat at the table. For lower tier schools, stats maybe good enough to get someone in, but the top top schools want to know if an applicant has intellectual curiosity, excel in whatever he/she is doing, leadership quality. A lot of people misunderstand the leadership quality as one must become the captain of a sports team or president of student council. I think what they are looking for is if one would do over and beyond, and be one of the best in whatever he/she is doing.

OP maybe doing one of those low level, boring jobs, but is he a great worker despite what the job is, did he do more than what’s asked of him. I interviewed an applicant for a job once. He told me that he was a clerk at a wireless phone store. It didn’t sound very impressive initially, but I probed him more on what was the most interesting about the job (I expected him to say nothing) and what was the best thing he did on the job. He thought about it then said, “This is nothing, but I came up with a marketing campaign to target new international students for my boss and the sale for back to school went up X%.” He also created a data base to track the store’s inventory - integrated their POS (point of sale) system with his data base. I hired this new graduate.

Your ECs and awards sections are very important. Try to use the description section wisely, key words and capital letters will draw adcoms’ attention. Your essay(s) will then tie your whole application together. Think of application as the most important marketing material about you. Sometimes it is not what you do, but how you present it. Paid work is a good EC if you make it a good EC.