<ul>
<li>A person with numerous ECs that are random (eg: Karate, peer tutoring in math, volunteer in medical center, involved with student council, collyball sport)</li>
</ul>
<p>Or does Stanford want:</p>
<ul>
<li>A person with a focused range of EC (eg: Chess club at school, Chess class with a UCLA Chess champ, CHess tournaments, Member of United States Chess Federation, and member of the Peninsula Chess Center)</li>
</ul>
<p>the set of ECs you pursued because you wanted to do them and not because some stranger on the internt told you they would look better to Stanford!</p>
<p>I agree with 3togo. There is no right way to get into Stanford and no wrong way to get rejected by it. Do what you want. I always thought that was weird when people told me that, but now I understand. You just won't achieve your potential if you do what looks best. Do what you're good at or like.</p>
<p>There are two words I've always heard tossed around when it comes to EC's, I think I heard them first from a guy running a local Stanford Info Session. They were "breadth" and "depth". Ideally, as the above posters have pointed out, you will have undertaken EC's only because you wanted to, and not because you have college in mind, but I think we all know that is, to varying degrees depending on the person, unrealstic. So, in the context of your two examples above, I think having breadth and depth would mean having some combination of the two scenarios you described above - someone who has undertaken a wide range of activities, but has delved deeply into several of them.</p>
<p>Yea, but isn't it hard to perform deeply into a wide range of activities? I would explode....I mean, you can have maybe two different ECs. but with like 7 different ones...and on top, studying for APs and SATs...that would be difficult. </p>
<p>Besides (something totally different): My friend says that if you want to be selected to Stanford or even UCs, you must be involved with the school.
I created a chess club (my HS didn't have one...yea), but my friend says it's nothing. He says you must be involved with the school (student council, homecomming, etC) if you want to go to Stanford. Is that reletively true? What did you all do? Were majority of Stanford accepted people in student council?</p>
<p>Hmm, one question at a time. To answer the first one, yes it is hard to delve deeply into a wide range of activities. But I was proposing something different: being involved, to some degree, in a wide range of activities, but making sure that you concentrate and put a lot of time into at least a few of them. That “delving deeply” can come in many forms: some type of leadership position, searching out and participating in some kind of program in that subject external to your school, etc. Stanford isn’t looking for you to put that kind of time into all your EC’s - not only would that be impossible, but moreover they want to see different levels of time and commitment put into each EC because that shows that you have priorities, varying levels of interest, and are able to show a bigger passion for certain things.</p>
<p>As for your second question, I certainly don’t think you have to be involved in some type of student council to get into Stanford. However, there might be some truth to what your friend said about being involved with your school. I think doing things through your school gives whatever activity it is your doing some level of legitimacy that is harder to show on an application otherwise. When you do things like varsity athletics or student council, I think most admissions officers will feel safe making the assumption that you put a lot of time into that particular activity. Once you leave that sphere of well-known, school sponsered EC’s, their legitimacy, and by corrollary their weight they give to your application, becomes much more variable. I think that might have been what your friend was trying to say about you starting a chess club. At some schools, I bet someone could do that with a couple hours worth of work, never make it go anywhere, and then describe it in such a way on their college application that it makes it seem on par with finding a cure for cancer. Maybe in your case starting the club was no easy task, and after it was founded you turned your school into one of the best chess teams in the state…but how do admissions officers know which one is the truth? Of course, you can tell them on your application, provide a list of awards, maybe even a rec from a faculty sponser, but ultimately it comes down to how swayed AO’s are by the perceived importance of any given thing that you listed on your application. And the fact of the matter is that at least at a glance activities like student council seem much more time consuming and impressive than other activities.</p>