Soike

I copied and pasted @CameronBameron answer she gave months ago when you asked the same exact question and accepted her answer. What's so difficult about understanding what a spike is? Remember that the word "spike" means a huge change in the expected values of something. So if someone is mining bitcoin using 1000 GPUS running 24 by 7, that's going to knock out the power grid in a residential neighborhood or knock out the electrical panel circuit breaker because most homes only have 100Amps or 200Amps. So that surge caused by this unusual activity is called an electrical "spike" because it's out of the ordinary and not to be expected.

So if you want to have a spike, you can't do normal ECs like run a blog, or have a writing club win some writing awards. A writing "spike" would be like publishing your own book on Amazon on something you are an expert on like writing a book of poetry or science fiction novel. That's a writing spike.

I didn't ask @CameronBameron permission but here it is. You can't ask and keep asking for a better explanation than that.

Hi @Swayam_Jain17,

Thanks for your question.

A "spike" is not a defined activity, achievement or leadership position. Unless of course you are Olympic Gold Medal FreeStyle Skier then your skiing spike is all 3 things.

Activity - Represented China in the 2021 Winter Olympics as a FreeStyle Skier

Achievement - Won 1 Gold Medal and 1 Silver Medal

Leadership Position - Represents 10 + luxury brands as a Brand Ambassador, makes frequent presentations to groups of young girls about equity in sports and a role model for millions of young athletes.

Rather a "spike" is something you are passionate and excellent at that you can share on your college application. It is not a re-summation or re-organization of your ECs but an overriding big theme skill, talent, experience that is reflected in your ECs, and perhaps parts of your academic narrative or intellectual vitality.

For instance, the applicant who is the skier might have a Math angle with their spike. Let say they are an innovator who likes to understand the Math and Physics of what they do athletically. Then this person might be creating a 3-D visual analysis tool that plots and maps their movements with a special suit they use with say 250 monitoring probes built into their suit. This way whoever is filming them can 3-D map ever position of their 1440s or 1620s and figure out how to do them better.

So your "spike" can be pretty much anything or multiple "spikes"

Here are some examples:

- Taught myself Bass Guitar and now I can play hundreds of songs and have huge social media following doing covers of bass riffs and also do educational videos on how to play various songs. I'm in a fusion jazz ensemble and fund raise on the weekend at outdoor malls and raised $65,000 for Ukrainian children where I send them musical instruments and sheet music.

-I'm a tech geek and have been taking apart PCs, tablets, smart phones my whole life. I have create 5 apps with 600,000 paid subscriptions. My side gig is fixing tech. My non-profit collects tech donations of laptops and we completely rebuild them and upgrade them and donate them to low income kids in our neighborhood so they can have access to their own personal devices instead of sharing. We worked out a deal with a local internet provider to donate bandwidth and so far have donated 350 laptops.

-I've been baking since I was five and it reminds me of chemistry class. I'm a master baker and innovator. I use my knowledge of chemistry and physics to figure out how to optimize recipes. I see something I want to make like super thick Japanese Pancakes and then figure out by trial and error how to create them from scratch using my STEM background and cooking talent. I want to invent future foods and snacks and create cooking videos that explain things visually better than in the past.

Good luck.

An EC spike is when you focus a lot of time and effort into a particular extracurricular you're in and are passionate about. This means you have hours that you have spent on it, have made contributions to whatever it is, etc. This could be a writing spike where you have entered competitions and won and have contribute heavily to your writing club.