Bad EC?

<p>Is managing a sports team at school a quality EC to put down on an application or does it not look very significant? I manage the tennis team on weekends at their meets because I play lacrosse in the spring and cannot attend both Tennis and Lacrosse practices.</p>

<p>Well, it's significant if you put in a significant amount of effort into it. If it takes up a good amount of time and has some impact (not something completely useless) then it's good to put it on your application. Don't worry about how an extracurricular activity "looks." Once a mom asked former admissions Dean Fred Hargadon of Princeton what her kid should do during the summer. Should he help the needy in Africa or teach English in China? Hargadon responded, "He should pump gas." What you do isn't as important as what significance it has on you and the character it builds.</p>

<p>dchow08, </p>

<p>I'm not 100% sure but I think that Princeton adcom story is an urban legend.</p>

<p>al6200: Urban legend or not, it's a fair point. I had a few friends attend Princeton, and the girl I knew best spent all of her HS summers at summer camp. Not "camp for the gifted" or "chemistry camp," but swimming, hiking, rowing, backwoods summer camp (well, for 6 weeks, anyway...the rest of the time, she slept in and hung out with friends). The belief that a student looking at top colleges needs to spend every summer doing publication-worthy research is misguided. That's not to say "slack off, you'll be fine," but it is to say that your situation is what you make of it, and that there's no formula for any of this.</p>

<p>OP: To me, it neither looks 'barrel-scrapingly' desperate nor mind-blowingly impressive. There's certainly nothing <em>bad</em> about it. If it's meaningful to you and you have space, include it. Depending on what your duties are, it might even fall under "Leadership."</p>