<p>Are Extracurriculars Important in Grad admissions?</p>
<p>or at all considered</p>
<p>The generic advice is: “Not unless they are relevant to your proposed field of study.” I would add: “or impressive enough to catch people’s attention.” (I have a friend who is now a graduate student in math and who, as a college student, raised a six-digit amount of money for charity. I would be surprised if that fact had not made it into her letters of recommendation and impressed some of the adcoms.)</p>
<p>But no need to join 20 clubs in college to pad your resume for grad school applications. Adcoms won’t care (and in the extremes, might even get concerned about your apparent lack of commitment).</p>
<p>What about if you were the president of your school’s chapter of a nation wide organization or held some other position. I know this stuff matters alot for B.School. Plus, I’ve seen alot of programs ask for your resume which I assume would include those positions, especially if your a recent grad or senior, which I am. </p>
<p>Obviously, the fact that you were just a member doesn’t really matter, esp. since its easy to fake that stuff. An officer position at least shows responsibility, or am I wrong?</p>
<p>For academic graduate school (as opposed to professional graduate schools like law, business, or medicine), extracurriculars do not matter, except, as B@r!um states, if they are relevant to the field. Even then, they barely matter. Graduate programs only care about your ability to perform high-level scholarship. </p>
<p>Extracurriculars often matter when applying to outside scholarships, however. Some want to see leadership and community involvement as well as high-level academics.</p>