Extracurricular Activities—“Pursue your Passion!”
A common question we receive is in regards to which extracurricular activities will look best on a college application. Our simple rule of thumb is to “pursue your passion” – in other words, do what you love to do with your free time.
Why? Our experience is that the schools that ask for essays, interviews, etc. are really trying to build a strong community—a balanced and diverse place where students can foster their own passions and learn about others. Therefore, they are extremely interested in what you, the student, are going to contribute to the college community with your free time.
Unfortunately, for many schools, there are just too many applicants that have the required GPA or SAT/ACT score for the amount of slots available. As a result, some colleges will look to aspects such as extracurricular activities to build their “ideal freshman class”. This may appear somewhat peculiar, but many colleges have an ideal community and seek to find applicants to fill the slots that are not filled or even slots that may be changing with the upcoming graduate class.
For example, there are only so many “editors of the school’s newspapers” and therefore, if the school already has enough candidates within their student body for that slot, they may choose to go in a different direction with their acceptances. Likewise, the jazz band may be losing a saxophonist in this year’s graduating class—therefore, an applicant who is an accomplished saxophone player may move up their list.
From our experience, we feel it’s important that a student focuses on what they love to do and show dedication, commitment and, ideally, achievement. Whatever the “passion” is, pursue it – whether it be softball, football, music, dance or even video games.
How crazy can this get? One recent example we loved involved students who loved to play music together. They created a music club. During the summer break, they organized a music camp for disadvantaged children who could not afford musical instruments or lessons. At the camp, the children were given instruments to play and given some basic lessons, leading to a performance by the camp attendees at the end. One could say this was an excuse for students to simply get together in the summer and play music. But, by giving back to the community, it was transformed into much more!
So, imagine your student’s passion is playing video games. Perhaps encourage him to form a club, become president of that club, and have a summer camp for disadvantaged youths allowing them exposure to video games and gaming systems they cannot afford.
In our opinion, spreading oneself too thin and being in every club in high school is not a good strategy. Instead, find something (or a couple of things) you love to do and do more of it! Quality over quantity is true here—making a difference as the President of one club will show a lot more than being a member of 8 others.
