<p>i've been planning my application to some of the best colleges in the usa for 4 years now. basically that meant challenging myself to get better, which i did because i'm the top of my class. I'm studying at a quite demanding school in spain (the german school), I speak fluent German, French, English and Spanish (the last I've been brought up with) and I'm good at all subjects. However, when I decided to improve my grades, I lost track of all the extracurricular activities I had done until then (none of them I did for more than 2 years). The most interesting thing I've done is go on my own to Germany for 3 months to live with a family and improve my German.</p>
<p>One of the colleges that interest me the most is Columbia in NY, but I often think that I won't be accepted because of the lack of extracurricular activities. Would anyone please tell me if these are of great importance?</p>
<p>Very selective schools such as Columbia are looking for people who can add to their community – based on past performance and future potential. Of course the first hurdle is superior academic ability (borne out by your GPA & test scores). Secondly, they must guage how much an applicant use their resources – how engaged and innovative and self-motivated the student has been. Lastly, they look to see how much you’ve been able to affect others around you.</p>
<p>How these last two are evaluated is not solely based on a laundry list of clubs/jobs/ECs but rather the entire story of the applicant. Is there something about your story that will suffice? And even if it’s sufficient, will it be enough to stand out among the many others with similar stories? It’s near impossible to guess – and can only and admit/reject will tell you the ultimate answer.</p>
<p>My advice to you would be if you find your academics to be reasonable and feel you’ve got a compelling story, then apply to some top schools. The key is to make sure you’ve got some other great schools that you can 100% envision yourself attending and enjoying that have broader admissions criteria – basically more match and saftey schools.</p>
<p>Sometimes people lose the forest for the trees. Try to pull up and see if there are patterns in your ECs. Rather than listing everything you did, try to identify themes and build your ECs around that. For example, if you sang in the choir, played violin in the orchestra, taught violin to the neighbor’s kid, took some piano lessons, composed a short piece and wrote a music review in the school paper, then you would list the EC as “music” and indicate that you’d pursued it for 10 years (or however many) and then describe the range of activities. Same thing for ‘sports’ or ‘social justice.’ The overall EC is more important than the specifics here. If there’s something particularly important - like your 3 months living as living abroad - you can break it out to highlight it, or weave it into your essays.</p>