<p>This can be a very significant time commitment if someone is babysitting for the same family on a regular basis, particularly if the reason for the babysitting is to accommodate a child with special needs. Has that ever been pitched successfully as an EC? I'm talking about babysitting outside one's family, not babysitting siblings.</p>
<p>My daughter used it as “employment,” on her apps, if I remember correctly.</p>
<p>Certainly, especially if you write an essay to explain exactly how it impacted you.</p>
<p>It should certainly qualify as an EC. It would also merit some explanation since it involves a child with special needs, so your D’s responsibilities would be somewhat different from the ordinary baby-sitting ones. By the way, I would also consider baby-sitting a sibling on a regular basis as an EC. Students from low-income families should not be penalized because their parents cannot afford for them to be involved in activities outside the home.</p>
<p>If she’s getting paid, it’s not an EC. She should include it in the Employment section of her resume.</p>
<p>I think it is silly to differentiate between job and EC on the apps…the question really is what do the kids do when they aren’t in school. I think you could list it in either spot and actually I’d tell my kids to put it in the spot where they had the most “space” to describe it. I’m not that familiar with the on-line apps since the kids fill those in so not sure if the description ares are space limited.</p>
<p>My older son volunteered as a teaching assistant in a program for autistic children (weekends) for a couple of years. He wrote his short college admissions essay about a positive experience he had while working as a volunteer. Since my son was not being paid, he listed it on volunteer work. If he had been paid, he would have listed the job under employment.</p>
<p>I am also in the camp of if you are getting paid then it’s not an EC, even if you are not getting paid but it’s it’s for a profit company then it’s an internship. You may write an essay about challenges of babysitting for a kid with special needs, but it’s not an EC.</p>
<p>I think it’s silly to differentiate between employment and EC. By its very definition, EC means extra-curricular, it does not mean “volunteering” “internship” “piano lessons” “sports.” EC means something that is not on the curriculum.
Can someone say that baby-sitting is part of the high school curriculum? If not, then it should be considered an EC. If people want to re-define it as employment, that is okay, but employment is a subdivision of EC.</p>
<p>My S, by the way, put down teaching in an enrichment program as one of his ECs, despite being paid for it. Nobody squawked.</p>
<p>Thank you, marite. That’s precisely what I was thinking about when I said EC – something that isn’t schoolwork.</p>
<p>In the strictest sense EC means something that is not on the curriculum, but how people are defining it to be for college application purpose does not include anything that’s a paid activity. That is why there is also an employment section.</p>
<p>Extracurriculars are all activities done outside the classroom. An Activity Resume should be broken into categories. One such category is Work Experience. Babysitting is listed under that category. My own kids, as well as many of my advisees, have listed babysitting under this category. They give how many hours per week or month. I have students write annotated resumes. Sometimes they don’t annotate babysitting but sometimes they might. If the student is working with a special needs child, that would come up in the annotation. Of course, it might be a topic of an essay but it depends what the student decides to write about among many options he/she might have. It would be appropriate as an essay topic if it had been a meaningful experience. But essays aside, it certainly would be listed as an activity under work experience, if it was done on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I agree with marite that work experience / employment is a subcategory of extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>I haven’t looked at common application in a while, do they only have one section - EC? Or do they have EC and employment (work experience)?</p>
<p>^Soozievt, You did a much better job of explaining it.</p>
<p>List it under Work/Employment Experience: she’s getting paid.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean when you ask about this activity being “pitched successfully”. In my view, ALL activities of any significant time commitment outside the classroom should be documented. I don’t know about pitching. But time spent doing meaningful activities, no matter the activity, should be presented on a resume or application. I would omit activities someone spent just some hours on. But regular commitments over time should be included. I prefer annotated resumes that also share what is meaningful or significant about the endeavor.</p>
<p>OP, will your D be leaving the employment section blank if she puts babysitting under EC? If so, I think that plan might backfire.</p>
<p>It only makes sense to put paid work experience under employment, babysitting included. But work experience IS extracurricular. All paid work goes under that category. Community service work goes under its category and so on. All are extracurricular endeavors.</p>
<p>Also when my students create annotated activity resumes, they come up with their own categories to organize the resume depending on how they might group their activities outside the classroom. It may differ from kid to kid. Some might have Athletics as a category and some would not. Some might have work experience as a category and some would not. And so on.</p>
<p>No; she also has had “regular” paid employment (retail) that she would be including.</p>
<p>It could actually link, thematically, better with some of her volunteer work where she is involved with coaching / teaching children.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I would list babysitting with her retail job under a category called Work Experience or Employment. Volunteer work would be in a category called Community Service.</p>