Rate my extracurricuars by tiers?(Rising Junior)

Applying to College
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Online Host: Started in freshmen year, created worldwide events on an online virtual world platform every week and then soon established an annual christmas online event during the summer of freshmen year. Over freshmen summer, I have worked to create posters and advertise on social media. In December of my sophomore year, I hosted it and over 300 people worldwide were involved. I was then featured in a youtube video when someone recorded the fashion show. I plan to host this event december of my junior year and working on preparing it right now. So far, I am planning on copying what i did in december 2020 but making it bigger and offering volunteer oppurtunities for other people to get involved. I started an instragram account for the annual event and have over 600 followers where I post updates about the event. Some point in May, I was noticed by a random person who was in charge of a Magazine company and he admired my work and offered me a role of Cheif of Operations for their company. I then decided to partner with them to advertise; I created flyers to advertise them and they created flyers to advertise my event. I know this sounds insane, but I promise you this actually happend. Overall, this was an event to bring people togethor during the pandemic.

Political non profit (state chapter) : Started June 2021, Applied an became direcor of outreach and social media. This nonprofit aimed to solve a probelm with 11 states not requiring civics education to high school and middle school students to graduate. It aimed to offer them information about civics to help them grow up to be engaged politcal citizens. I recently started this but so far I created posts to promote the nonprofit mission and try to get other people involved. I emailed institutions asking them to put the non profits website on their site and emailed schools in those 11 states.

Candidate’s Campaign: Started in May my sophomore year, havnt done much here
except assist in cutting out turfs to prepare to regist voters in the fall and suggesting policies through policy memos. I also created tiktok videos to promote their agenda.

Journalist for a teen magazine: Started in december of my sophomore year, wrote over 100 articles on various topics such as news, short stories, and random facts. I won a award for writing an article on the Electoral College and submitted that on the teen magazine.

Letters: started February of sophomore year, wrote letters that reflected on my life or provided advice and sent it to citizens in my county.

Conversations to Remember: Started in May of sophomore year, mentored senior citizens and had discussions with them over zoom calls to help them combat the feeling of isolation and lonliness.

Student Government: 8th grade vice president for 1 year, dropped student government freshmen year, joined it again sophomore year and did county council and held an appointed leadership role. For Junior year, I was appointed to serve in a board committee and a state committee.

Tutor: (started sophomore year in March 2021, tutored a second grader with English 2 times a week for 2 hours, then tutored a rising second grader over the summer for 2 times a week for 2 hours)

School Things(Theatre 3 years and earned one award, Mock Trial (1 year, started sophomore year, created a bill that passed the house and senate and was appointed to serve in a cabinet, and earned an award), Amnesty International(Never started this club yet, but will in Junior year and will hold a leadership position)

A selective 6 week government program: Learned public speaking, learned how to write policy memos, the major political science and other skills. Wrote a policy memo about domestic violence and sent it to a state candidate running for office. Created slideshow and Presented policy memo to panelists.

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Rate your ECs for what? If these are the ECs you enjoy, then do them.

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I agree that you need to slap some shape on your ECs, but crowdsourcing the shaping is not a good plan.

The key to ECs is not how anybody else ranks, rates or views your ECs, it’s you figuring out what they mean to you, and what that tells you about you. From an AO pov, with the exception of a handful of super-high flying ECs (think a top award at an international math competition), ECs are important in terms of what they tell you about the applicant (iow, there isn’t a clear hierarchy or set of tiers- it’s always in the context of what options were available to the applicant, and what the applicant did with the options available).

For example, everybody ‘knows’ that AO’s like to see ‘leadership’ roles, but students often get fixated on ‘must have a leadership role’ and overlook why they matter. Leadership roles are important as a proxy for other things: they imply something about how your peers see you, they demonstrate that you have been invested enough in the group to have gained their respect, they can indicate that you have had the experience of having to look out for the interests of the larger group, not just yourself, etc. So, when an AO sees:

they know perfectly well that lots of students start clubs to get a leadership position, but without more context and/or evidence of actual meaningful achievement, it will not carry the same weight as growing into a leadership role over time- even if the other group is something as simple as a head of the Book Club, vs a name-brand organization.

Junior year is a great year for taking all of your different initiatives (and btw, one of the strands that runs through most of your laundry list is initiative, which is a great trait), and figuring out where/how you are going to focus your efforts. It can be vocationally oriented (eg, all the political-type strands above linking to an interest in public policy), but it doesn’t have to be (eg, your more social strands- lots of communication elements there). What matters is that this is an important season for you discerning more about you- what’s important to you, what lifts your heart, where you shine, how you want to focus your time and energy. In turn that will help you identify what you want to look for in projects / internships / college programs.

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Good ECs are not a random list of accomplishments that you put on a shelf. A good list of ECs should tell a story of who you are outside your grades. Think about how they tie together, the ones that give the best picture of you are the ones that are most important.

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OP created a second account to ask this question, which violates ToS. Closing thread