My son has very few ECs. He became disenchanted with clubs after sophomore year - just didn’t feel it was worthwhile and lost interest.
He began volunteering with the town EMS junior year and continues to put in a shift per week, but without the school ECs, he was not accepted into the NHS due to not meeting the minimum club/sport requirement. He met the GPA and community service requirements.
I worried that it would affect admissions decisions, but luckily it hasn’t…though I still worry that he will miss out on scholarships without the clubs and any leadership roles.
DD is touring Pitt today and tomorrow. She really likes it there. She sat in on some classes, met the head of Neuroscience department, visited labs. I am glad that Pitt gave her such great impression.
My D is in Club No-Club. I wish she was more involved in a variety of ECs, but that really isn’t where her heart and head are at. She has one sport, not year-around. She volunteers, but its ad-hoc for a variety of organizations. She works a lot, and I’ve always been perplexed on how little importance employment is given on the common data set for most colleges. She has worked for over two years at a small, local bean-to-bar chocolate company. She’s done everything from design and sew their reusable gift bags made from the burlap sacks the cacao beans come in to grin-and-bearing-it with “customers” at holiday fairs who eat as many samples as possible only to declare the chocolate expensive and not as good as Hershey’s.
She knew going into the college application process the lack of long-term ECs could hurt her. The good news is she has safeties that are not holistic and happy to give her automatic merit for stats.
From what I’ve heard from Admissions Reps, work experience (flipping burgers … etc ) is highly valued.
D doesn’t have a lot of EC’s. No clubs at school. Her EC’s all reflect her love of the arts and fall in line with her intended major, so there is that. Another pointy kid.
The school with the missing SAT scores sent this explanation to D about why her scores may be missing, in case this ever comes up for any of you again: The scores are sent in a batch on an encrypted disc from the College Board to the school. The the disc is given to the IT people to de-encrypt, and scores are then uploaded to the individual files of the students who have applied. This can take a few weeks. Now, I had THOUGHT that scores were all sent electronically these days, but perhaps at some point discs are still involved. In any case, they told her to hold tight and check back in a couple of weeks.
@palm715 work is a completely legitimate EC. Matter of fact I think it is better than most things kids do. They can learn so many valuable things from work.
@RyanG1207 wow volunteering with EMS is impressive.
Thank you, @Dragonflygarden ! He took the EMT certification class over the summer and will be taking the state exam at the end of this month. He has seen a lot of interesting cases in his 1+ year on the squad.
Thank you @Undercovermom1 ! It’s a match school and my top choice so I’m really hoping. According to my overnight host who has friends who work in admissions, the letters are being mailed this week and next
@sseamom Not sure if I believe their explanation about the delivery of SAT scores. I don’t think scores are only delivered using a disc. I have seen D’s scores delivery in less than 24 hours as well as taking weeks. The scores that took weeks were part of the mid October problems College Board had. Maybe the disc version is is done for that particular school!
I didn’t know they used disc at ALL. These scores were delivered a week ago Friday. The following Monday, D got an email saying they had everything but the scores, so she and the admissions office have been emailing back and forth to determine where the scores were. So far any SAT scores we ordered too almost exactly a week to be delivered in some manner, and the other schools all show as having them. The ACT scores took much longer to arrive, but everyone we sent those to has them now.
My D doesn’t have a ton of in school club EC’s but she does have JV and Varsity Soccer. Varsity sports automatically gives you the ability to join Varsity leaders which does a lot of community service activities which she enjoys. She was in newspaper club for 2 years but the meeting day changed and it was then no good for her. She’s been in a book club last year and this year. One club she joined last year but it folded. Other than those and Spanish Honor Society and NHS, no other clubs has grabbed her attention enough for her to take time away from the ones she already does outside of school. The outside of school EC’s are the one’s she is most involved with and fulfill her desire to give back (and the people are not so cliquey - which is a problem in most of the HS clubs). Many of her outside EC’s she has been doing straight through since 7th, 8th or 9th grade (not because it looks good but because it feels good to help others. She is a volunteer for our local Lion’s Club, an ENL tutoring, she collecting food for our church’s food pantry, she has been playing on various outside soccer teams (continuously since 2nd grade), she assists our beloved disabled elderly neighbor with outside yard maintenance (this has been a family affair for over a decade), and being a red cross blood donor (every 8 weeks since she was old enough). So while my D’s in school clubs may look weak, taken in connection with all the things she does outside of school (simply because she loves doing them) tells the bigger picture, I think…we hope…LOL.
Thanks RyanG1207. That’s what we think but many kids in her school have 4-5 in school clubs (and are president, vp or treasurer of multiple ones) or hold office in student government. She is a continuous starter and captain on her soccer teams for multiple years but no other leadership position in her EC’s. One student in my S’s graduating year was one of the authors of two articles that were published in physics journals! In comparison to those situations, she feels she is a bit weak. I say you have to be true to yourself and do what you enjoy and hope those attributes are what they are looking for and appreciated.
At my kids school there is a rule that clubs can only happen on days when there is a late bus available, which is only Mondays and Wednesdays. No clubs want to meet on Mondays because everyone forgets to stay after so pretty much every club meets on Wednesday. Makes it hard to be in more than one club there.
DD became a NSLI-y semi finalist. If she’s selected as a finalist, she can go abroad for a year to study foreign language. She’s still 16 yrs old wishing to have a gap year after high school so it is a good chance.
@NYDad513 Your D sounds like a very accomplished young lady. She took awesome initiative starting her own literary magazine club! I think if this NSLI-y competition is important to her (which it definitely seems to be) then it seems highly likely that she will be selected as a finalist! Not that she needs it but just in case I am crossing my fingers and toes and thinking only positive thoughts for her! My D is so looking forward to studying abroad. Not during a semester though but for a short summer or J term situation. She would be too nervous trying to maintain her academics and fighting off the urges to explore all the time. I am hoping that after some time in college she will change her mind and want to do a semester or year abroad. She wrote her CA essay about all the traveling she has done (traveling all over the northeast, southeast and midwest the last two years for college tours and also our European vacation to Italy, France and Spain last summer).
@Themommymommy Thanks a lot. I hope all the experiences she had help her later life. I was surprised when I learned what she did while reading her resume. She did not tell me anything about the literacy magazine. She definitely knows more than me about publishing.
@lvmjac1 Thanks a lot. DD is like… try hard and see what happens. There were several incidences she failed but she did not care. She said she will apply different program early next year as a backup. I think there are many study abroad opportunities at college and I am sure your D will have a good chance to participate.
@RyanG1207, I find the EMS gig to be exceptionally impressive. That is real life, valuable responsibility.
I find ordinary afterschool-type jobs (like the ones my friends and I used to have; fast food or whatever) to be valuable and character building. It’s not a bad thing to understand what grunt work entails, and ideally it builds an appreciation in a person for the importance of all sorts of jobs.