I am a high school senior applying to a lot of top colleges and am worried about my extracurriculars not being good enough. Here are some of my stats
4.0 (unweighted, my school doesn’t do weighted GPA)
Will graduated with 11 honors classes (my school doesn’t do AP or IB, only honors)
No SAT or ACT due to it getting cancelled because of COVID
Public high school in 9th grade and public online school 10-12th.
Here are my current extracurriculars:
-gymnast (since 4th grade, but not good enough for college gymnastics)
-member of my church life groups (since junior year)
-member of a FROG church group in 9th grade
-gymnastics coach (junior year-summer before senior)
-started my own small non-profit where I make and distribute care packages to the homeless (but I started it beginning of senior year)
-volunteer at my gyms home meet every year
-violinist from 6th-9th grade, head chair in 9th grade
These are all of my extracurriculars, I am worried they are not good enough for top colleges. I am planning to go on the pre-med track, so I tried to volunteer at clinics in 9th and 10th but did not allow me since I was under 18, now that I am 18 I can’t anyways because of COVID. I thought about volunteering weekly at my local food bank but I am kinda nervous about doing that because of COVID and it might be too late anyways since it is December of my senior year… what do you guys think?
You do not need to attend a “big name” university to find a strong premed program, nor to get accepted to medical school.
I do think that December of senior year is late to add ECs. I also think that COVID has messed up a lot of ECs for nearly every student.
Being a gymnast from 4th through 12th grade shows a lot of commitment. Being a gymnastics coach is a good EC, and is both helpful to others and continues this same commitment. I like these ECs.
I think that you should do three things: (i) Continue to participate in the ECs that you want to do; (ii) Make sure that you apply to at least two solid safeties; (iii) Try not to worry about it.
I might add one more thing: Make sure that you want to attend your reach schools, and understand what it means to attend a highly ranked university. Do not just go from rankings.
Thank you for your reassurance and advice. I have researched a lot of the schools and have found the ones I am truly passionate about. I am just worried that all of my hard work through high school is going to be for nothing… I got rejected from Stanford (which was my dream school), I understand that it is one of the hardest schools to get into, but I can’t help but worry for the others. I do have some safeties which I got into the state school already, so I have that at least.
I second the suggestion. Very well put. The extracurriculars are good enough. To me what matters is how well you can sum up your extracurriculars in a convincing fashion in a written form like a sop or in an oral form during an interview (if at all).
Your hard work is setting you up to do well in university. If you are starting off with premed classes, you will want to show up well prepared. Premed classes will be tough from your very first homework, test, or exam. Doing well in high school has also taught your how to work hard and how to study. These are valuable skills that you are going to use for a very long time.