I am planning on applying to the “Veritas” via/ early action. In the meantime, I encountered a problem.
I have made a very broad list of my extracurriculars/internships/comm. service etc. stuff . This Broad (And I mean like 40 activities) range of activities succeeds the number common app accepts, which is I think 10
Do you think I should just choose the 10 most important ones or tell the addmission office with the additional info essay?
And do you think it would be wise if I combined 3-4 clubs into one section. For eg:
Activity 1:
Establishment of Spanish/Theater/Debate clubs
Activity 2:
Captain in school volleyball team/class basketball team
List the ten most meaningful things to you, in order of importance to you. If you think others believe you have more than 10 meaningful things, then you’re extremely mistaken. No one really even cares about items 5 on down…
@T26e4 At what point should one not list activities. I was just wondering because similar to the OP, I think I might be listing too many activities. When should you add them and when should you not for fear of “diluting” your app?
Colleges understand that students taking a rigorous course schedule must spend 3 to 4 hours a night on homework. That leaves approximately 20 hours a week to devote to extracurricular activities.
When you complete your EC list, college’s ask you to list your EC’s in order of importance to you – and they prefer students who have made a significant time-commitment to their activities (3-6 hours a week), rather than students who have a laundry list of activities that they spend 1 or 2 hours a week on. The idea is that a student’s commitment and devotion (some call this passion, but I’m trying to avoid that word) to something in high school demonstrates a transferable set of skills – something that could be directly transferable to another activity in college, or in life after school. Here’s my rather crass rule of thumb: Add up the time you spend in the bathroom each week, including showering and using the toilet. I guarantee it adds up to more than one hour per week. So you should not list an EC that takes up less time than you use in the bathroom!
You don’t have to include everything you have done in high school on your EC list. If you’ve seriously done 40 activities in high school, a list like that is going to come across as scattered. Focus your list on the top 6 to 10 activities that are the most important to you. Maybe that’s going to involve combing activities. However, combing activities so that you only have 2 of them on your EC list would seem to be a risky approach. Remember, you are trying to paint a picture of who you are by what you do. And colleges these days seem to be looking for lop-sided students, students who have a demonstrated interest and ability for one thing. This is where a student could highlight one area, by showing devotion to 3 or 4 different EC’s that cover that one area. And then listing another 4 to 6 EC’s that demonstrate diversity or a commitment to several other areas.
In my opinion the above post by @gibby is precisely on target and should go into the CC Hall of Fame. To illustrate his point, I’ll summarize the priorities of my son, who ended up with excellent options for college.
His first priority was academics: UW 4.0, valedictorian, extremely rigorous schedule, Natl. AP Scholar junior year, State AP Scholar senior year. Of course academics consumed a lot of time.
His second priority was his sport, in which he competed at the highest level.
His third priority was community service, for which he was nationally recognized.
His fourth priority was music, primarily acoustic guitar.
For ECs, that was about it; three items: sports, community service, music. But he approached each with commitment and devotion. Like @gibby, I avoid calling it passion, perhaps “intense dedication” says it better.
In short, his ECs could fit on three lines. That was enough for any college.
I have some activities which I only spend 2 hours a week on. I’m s =till passionate about them and have club positions in them. Should I still include them?
Thank you for your beautiful comments @gibby@sherpa@T26E4 , I see more clear now.
Although, couldn’t it be that my “passion” is to learn about a very diverse activity range? I want to know about ancient roman literature but also modern sci-fi. I want to know how to dance and I also want to know how to debate.
For instance, once, I had to establish a French course in high school because a lot of students wanted but no one could open it. Yet, even though I had little interest on French, I made the arrangements and that year, the first ever French course was opened in my school.
I also tried a lot of stuff to learn my passion. I learnt basic piano, guitar and even cello. At the end, I figured I didn’t really like any, but piano. Due to the circumstance, I didn’t have the chance to advance in my piano but I now know for a fact that I will work on my piano skills in college.
Same thing goes for sports. I’ve tried table tennis, volleyball, court tennis etc.
Wouldn’t this also show me as a person trying to learn who he is before college, unlike most teenagers who learn at college?
Now I know who I am, more than most of the standard college students.
Harvard isn’t looking for dilettantes. They’re looking for excellent students who also excel at something else besides being able to say they’ve had a broad range of experiences. And don’t use the word “passionate” in your application. It makes the adcoms throw up a bit. Your passions will be demonstrated and obvious or you probably won’t be getting in.
@IvyWin: When looking at an EC list, an Admissions director can only infer “passion” by looking at the number of hours per week a student devoted to an activity multiplied by the number of weeks they participated in that activity.
The more hours devoted to an activity, the more an AO “sees” that a student has an intense dedication, but they cannot understand the passion a student has for an activity unless the student writes an essay about the subject.
If you have an activity that you only spend 2 hours per week on — and feel the activity is important to you, by all means put it down. But don’t expect an AO to infer the passion you feel for it, unless you write an essay about it, or one of your teachers writes about it in their letter of recommendation.
@ClownInSuit: If you have a passion for learning, you need to write an essay about it, rather than submit a laundry list of smaller items on the EC list.