Extracurriculars on College ApplicationsAnswered
Hey! I'm a rising senior getting ready to start applying to college, but I'm having some trouble with my applications. While my coursework and GPA are strong, and I've attended a competitive program over the summer, I'm nervous that my extracurriculars are lacking a bit. I have two interest clubs I participate in (one surrounding community service) and am planning on volunteering throughout the upcoming school year by joining a service organization and also tutoring students after school. Should I join/start more clubs next year? I'm not sure if it'd be worth it because it'd be right when applications start and it wouldn't show that I've participated in them for very long. On the other hand, I'm still interested in them and they would make my application less empty. What should I do?
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3 answers
I think that you should participate in more extracurriculars. So far, you have a good base of activities that shows that you are well-rounded, which is part of what colleges want to see. The other types of activities they want to see are those that demonstrate a spike, or interest in one or two areas. These are the extracurriculars that you should add to your list.
Colleges care much more about the impact, spike, and leadership your extracurriculars showcase than the length of time you've been doing them. Adding them to your list as soon as possible will only help you. Check out this blog post for a list of activities you could start doing at home this summer. Hope this helps!
Ignore the system for weighing extracurriculars, apart from sports it kinda sucks. Just rely on your number of hours spent doing an extracurricular, try to bulk up that number as much as possible by pouring more into them, specifically community service.
Hi @sabrinaf5,
What kind of colleges are you applying to next cycle? And how did you arrive at picking those schools as a good fit for you?
Having attended high school for 3 years, do you play a Varsity sport? Are you in your school orchestra, band, or marching band? Are you on the dance team or perhaps a Cheerleader? Do you do any individual sports/activities outside of school like Rock Climbing/Bouldering/HorsebackRiding/Ballet/Karate/Judo/TaeKwonDo/Fencing/Rowing? Are you involved in your school's theater or drama productions? Like the annual school musical? One-act plays? Or perhaps a stage manager? Do you take any singing/voice lessons? Do you write for the school newspaper? Write short stories for publication? Do girl Scouts? Sing in your church choir? Do you do any activism in your community?
I ask these things because most rising seniors have a long list of passion projects they are involved with, leadership roles both in and out of school, and some standard ECs like student council, editor of the newspaper, team captain of a sport, etc.
Depending on what colleges you are applying to, having only 2 clubs and no leadership, sports, musical/acting/artistic talent, does not make you a very compelling applicant at top colleges.
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thank you so much!! i really appreciate your feedback, it was really helpful :)