Rate my ECs?

Hi, I’m a senior from India who wants to apply abroad. I wanted to know if my ECs and Activities are good enough. I haven’t given the SAT but hoping to score above 1450.

  • CBSE

  • 9th: 95%

  • 10th: 92%

  • 11th: 81%

  • SAT: 1300 diagnostic (no prep, Bluebook)

Intended Major
Business Administration / Management / Marketing

Main ECs

  • Deputy Head Girl

  • Head of UNHRC & Director of International Press (MUN)

  • Multiple internships in content creation, video editing, website management, and marketing for lifestyle/apparel businesses

  • Founder of FireWatch (technology safety project); participated in Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, Inspire Manak, and other competitions

  • Tinker’s Lab participant (IIT Hyderabad)

  • Actor, scriptwriter, production lead, and casting coordinator for school production of Romeo & Juliet

  • Editorial Captain

  • Basketball team

  • LogiQids Mental Aptitude Olympiad: Zonal Rank 29, International Rank 45

  • Rashtriya Bal Vaigyanik Pradarshini: 1st Place (School Level)

Budget: Ideally $15k–20k/year after aid.

Looking for realistic US universities with strong business/management programs and scholarship opportunities for international students, hopefully 100% scholarship?

Could you please do a chance me/Match me post. There is a good template there which can be completed and gives folks very complete information. You have most of that here, but IMHO, you will get better responses using the chance me match me.

I will say, your biggest issue is going to be your budget. You need at least a full tuition scholarship or need based aid to meet your price point. 100% scholarships for international students can be challenging to find.

Are you open to attending any college in the U.S.?

Keep in mind that once you have completed your college studies, your student visa will expire, and you likely will be required to return to your home country.

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Thanks for responding! I’m new to the platform so I didn’t know there was a chance me option but I’ll look for it. I’m aware that 100% scholarships are tough but I was hoping to get something to close to that. And yes, my plan is to apply for colleges in the US. Which is why I wanted to know if my extracurriculars are good enough or based on my extracurriculars, what colleges do I have a good chance of getting in?

Create a new thread and choose “chance me / match me” as the category. You’ll be presented with a template.

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To answer you, at least on paper, your ECs sound great. You want quality, not quantity.

But budget and academics are the hurdle to get over vs ECs - which are unlikely to move a needle vs what you have already - if you were thinking of enhancing. Many schools don’t even look at ECs.

Looks great, but I think “scriptwriter” for Romeo and Juliet might need more explanation on any application. There is, quite famously, a script for that play.

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You have certainly done an interesting mix of things!

High level, holistic review residential colleges in the US are looking at activities because they have a lot of valued student activities themselves. At these sorts of colleges, these are considered critical parts of the college experience. And there are typically dozens of different activities that are valued by the college.

And then every year, a bunch of seniors graduate, seniors who were playing critical roles for these activities, often in leadership positions. So part of the job of Admissions is to keep enrolling new students who will be participants in those activities, and ideally eventually take on critical roles themselves before leaving.

OK, so when looking at an applicant’s activities, they might have several sorts of questions in mind.

One is whether this is a type of activity their students do, or at least is related to things their students do. But since that is often a very long list, it isn’t hard to satisfy.

Another question is whether you demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm and dedication to any given activity. This is really important because they want to know if you will keep doing these things in college. If it appears you were just doing something to, say, check a box that you heard would be good for college admissions, that isn’t of much use to them.

And finally, sometimes, not always, they may be evaluating whether you have demonstrated the sort of talent, skill, or so on that suggests you can keep participating at their college. Depending on the college and activity, it may be pretty selective to participate, because a lot of talented/skilled people want to do it but only so many can. So in those cases, it can matter to them if you appear likely to be competitive in such a selection process.

OK, so based on what you told us, I am confident as to the first sort of question, meaning a lot of those are the sorts of activities students at US colleges do, or are at least related.

As to the other two questions, though, that is going to require more information, the sorts of information that will go into your actual applications.

Just by way of example, you mention basketball. But how dedicated/enthusiastic were you about basketball? Basketball is also pretty popular, and can be competitive for selection. Varsity basketball teams, in fact, are usually VERY competitive, and you probably need to be recruited (although there is also sometimes a walk on process, and then something called recruited walk ons). But even what is called club basketball can be very competitive, like these might be people who were quite good in high school but not quite good enough to be recruited, or maybe they just didn’t want the commitment of a varsity team.

But again, this can vary a lot by school.

OK, so all this is leading up to the idea that usually, admissions officers are looking for maybe 1-3 main types of thing you are actually likely to do as a busy college student, including in light of demonstrated talent/skill as relevant. Other stuff can be interesting, but that main handful is what helps them understand how admitting you would help satisfy their overall enrollment goals when it comes to activities.

So I don’t know what that handful might be for you, but I would suggest thinking in those terms. Again, you can do lots of things for interest. But if you were, say, talking directly to an admissions officer and they asked you what are you most likely to actually dedicate yourself to doing at their college if they enroll you as a student, what might you say? And then basically you can have that answer in mind as you are preparing for and then writing your applications.

And in fact, it can be part of choosing colleges for your list, although typically pretty far down the priority list. Like first, you need to be able to afford your college, and second, it needs to have whatever degree programs you might need. But after that sort of fundamental thing, having activities you would like to keep doing at a level appropriate for you is one of the things you can start considering as well.