Will colleges understand my struggles of finding extracurriculars after the pandemic?

Answered

Hi @bbymario

Thanks for your question. As someone that suffered mentally through the pandemic, I think the tricky thing is not to use the add'l information section if you can or NOT write about your learning loss, or depression in your essays. Why? Because 3,650,000 seniors each year all have had some suffering through the pandemic and college admissions officers are frankly tired of reading 1 million essays or add'l information sections about COVID-19 issues. It's the #1 thing to write about.

So what kind of applicant impresses a college admissions officer then if 90% of the files are making excuses or asking for pardons for their lack of ECs, and community service? I think the kind of applicant that impresses application reader are the ones that get up every morning and try to get something positive done in their lives in spite of terrible things happening around them.

Now that we are in a sort of post-COVID or ongoing endemic COVID maintenance mode, we can see that COVID and future strains can be managed for the most part by drug therapy and getting vaccinated. Therefore, there really isn't an excuse anymore for anyone to say, they can't do a sport, can't volunteer, can't hold leadership positions, can't work, can't start clubs, and can't thrive in school class learning. So the most important thing is to get back to the idea of doing all those things as soon as possible.

If you go into your 11th and 12th-grade years with a strategy to re-start your ECs, Sports, Leadership Roles, Community Service, and Intellectual Vitality and make a real effort, then you have a good chance of impressing your application readers. If you just focus on grades, not so much. There are far too many applicants for each competitive school as you know, so the ones that have both a strong academic narrative and an equally strong EC/Community Service/Leadership who also submit high test scores on the SAT/ACT have the pole position to get admitted into these better schools. Grades alone will not get the job done, even at top public colleges.

If you end up doing non-traditional ECs like starting your own club or starting your own business, remember that how you affect your target audience positively is more important than the idea of starting your own something. You need to show measurable metrics, whether that is sales, or persons helped or something that is tangible to impress application readers if you are not going for traditional leadership positions like Team Captain of a Varsity Sport, Editor of the School Newspaper, Student Body President, or running one of the community-based organizations already established in your city.

Good luck.