I have very few ECs in high school (9-12th grade)
-Made it to Technothlon finals held at IIT-Guwahati but lost at finals. Got gold certificate for making it to last level though.
-nothing else!
Junior School
-Won school conducted debate competition twice (6th and 7th grade)
-Won school conducted chess competition (6th grade)
-School topper National Cyber Olympiad (5th grade)
-Won scholarship and certificate of merit at AITS (All India Talent Scholarship) exam (6th grade)
-Participated in Science and Maths exhibition but their are certificates are lost hence don’t have any proof.
Considering this, I have more ECs in junior school and only one EC (yet valuable) at high school? Will colleges consider these junior school ECs?
Please reply, I am from India and will apply to US colleges next year. Will give ACT and SAT subject tests in May or June.
No, things before high school are not considered.
Common app only asks for ECs 9-12
Check out the “hidden ECs” thread on thus site. I’m sure you have more than just the one… What are you doing in your free time?
@jamesjunkers I do have other ECs at high school but don’t have certificates for them, so I won’t have any proof about them. My high school was too lazy to provide participation certificates either.
Some of them are
-Participated in Science Exhibition in 9th grade.
-Participated in Idea interschool Quiz competition
-Participated in School conducted quiz competition
-Participated in english play drama
Other non school ECs or you can say hobbies,
-Flight simulator, nearly mastered flying 737 and 777
-Die hard Queen fan, perhaps know most of their songs by heart and even performed them in school
In India we don’t get much opportunities like those in American schools, so I am really deprived of ECs. In the mean time I was much more focused on academics.
And even why do colleges need so many ECs in US, do they want to produce engineers or end up producing bunch of social workers?
If I get good score in ACT (33+) and have good GPA or whatsoever, will I have even a bit of chance? Please do reply.
You don’t need to provide proof of ECs.
I don’t think so the ECs which I have given are that good (quality wise). But I think the Technothlon certificate is perhaps a major EC, the competition itself was very rigorous and making it to finals among all other students in India was not an easy task. Will I be given any opportunity to explain the colleges that I only lost by few points or whatsoever?
You’re underestimating your ECs, they’re not bad.
On the commonapp, you have room to explain each EC, so yes. If you want to see, go make a common app account with random info, just to see it (you’ll have to make a new one next year)
Thanks for reply. I will try to do more ECs this year but I still don’t believe they don’t ask for any proof, even for international students. If this is so then any one can lie on their application form.
They do not ask for any proof, so don’t worry about that. Sure, anyone CAN lie on their application form. That is true for US students, too. But if the EC is too spectacular (eg, state champion, national award in science competition, etc.), Google makes it easy to check if they are suspicious. Or a quick email to a school guidance counselor (but if the GC doesn’t know because it is something outside of school, they would generally talk to the student before responding). But I think it is very rare for them to try to do any checking on ECs unless they have some reason to be suspicious (someone sends them a note saying such and such a student is inflating their ECs, for example). So do not worry about “proof” of ECs, there is no requirement for that.
The only time either of my kids put something down that was pre-9th grade was that one of them had an EC that they had done for 8 years, and they had a cumulative total of something they had accomplished that was kind of impressive if all years were taken into account. But other than that, they did not report stuff from middle school. One could have – she had a top 3 finish out of 10,000 students her age on a test score in a talent search competition in middle school. But she didn’t put it in her app.
Thanks for everyone who replied. My mind is bit eased now, I was thinking that I wasted money filling the ACT and SAT subject tests form only on grounds of one EC.