What are some achievements you can achieve without having a school team?

Hi @ssy0305,

As I mentioned before academics, course rigor, intellectual vitality, and test scores are very meaningful at a school like Columbia. Nevertheless, you need to develop some kind of spike narrative for yourself. Living in a rural area doesn't excuse you from finding things to do that you are good at. Even if you don't play on a varsity team, depending on where you live you can run, ride horses, rock climb, bike, ski, sail, and practice martial arts. You work with what you have. You can work on a farm, tutor kids, make arts and crafts, and sell them on ETSY, you can trade stocks. You can teach yourself guitar, drums, start a band, etc.

One consistent theme you have in all your inquiries is that you are under the impression that your town size or where you go to HS has prevented you from getting involved in sports, clubs, ECs, community service, volunteering, leadership, music, theater, and the arts. But I'm not so sure that if you went to a large suburban high school with 2500 students you'd be playing lacrosse or water polo, joining the marching band, or taking AP ART anyway.

So I think you need to brainstorm and get motivated to create some spike activities that leverage your innate talents or challenge your potential. Without showing admissions officers evidence that you used your available time effectively and applied yourself, all you will have to show is your grades, essays, and recommendations. These days that's not really going to excite any application reader to advocate for you to a uber competitive college that has a 3.73% acceptance rate.

I would NOT worry about honors and achievements because that's like icing on the cake. In your case, you need a cake before you need to worry about how great of a cake it is.

Good luck.

To add to the other answers, you are not limited to doing activities at your school or even local area. There are plenty of impressive extracurriculars you can pursue online or in your local community.

For example, you can start a business to solve a global problem you are concerned about. Everything from setting up an LLC to selling products can all be done online and with a few trips to your local post office.

If you are interested in politics, you could write blogs and organize phone banking events - or you could even flood a US Senator's mailbox with constituent letters! Budding ecologists can start apiaries in their back yards, and aspiring writers can self-publish books on Amazon.

In the age of the Internet, you are no longer limited by a lack of resources at your school. The possibilities to create stellar extracurriculars for yourself are endless. This CollegeVine blog post will give you some more ideas.

Hope this helps!

Hi @ssy0305,

I understand your frustration with your school's lack of after-school activities and clubs. However, if you have and will challenge yourself with the highest academic rigor possible given your objective environment, you should not be concerned or paranoid. Colleges will take it into consideration, and you should explain it in your resume as well; otherwise, they may be unaware. Even if your school does not have team competitions and you do not participate in sports or music. Most universities will be fair and equitable to students with varying financial circumstances.

That doesn't mean you can't do anything for extracurriculars. For example, you should be having long hours of community service focused on one or two specific causes. Volunteer hours are also a necessary condition for joining the National Honors Society. You could seek of joining individual-based competitions, such as Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, National History Day, We the Students Essay Contest, and Poetry Nation. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to know that you have done your best despite your limitations, colleges will see that.

Best Luck