I’m Mihir and I’m a graduate from the international school of tomorrow in Moscow,Russia. I’m currently on my gap year, and am applying to universities now for regular decision. My school didn’t exactly have clubs or organizations or anything like that, our school system was very different. We used the ACE system. So I don’t exactly know if I have any extracurricular activities to state on my common app profile. I can say I’ve learned quite a few programming and markup languages online , but I have no idea how to state that as an extracurricular activity as it requires position,organization name, etc.
I am sure that the admissions officers assigned to review non US colleges are used to international students resume to be a bit different. Even in US students do things on their own they can list. I haven’t seen a common app,I cation recently so I can’t say about format but just omit position title if it doesn’t apply. If you can’t make it fit the EC section, then use the Other Info section and note Self Study or other things that you do to peruse your interests.
Note that ECs don’t have to be clubs, organized, involve titles or positions…they are just the things you do outside of school that you spend a lot of time on. They can be recreational sports, music, art, etc…
The schools are asking because 1) they want to know what you will contribute to the student body in terms of skills and experiences 2) they want to know that you are engaged outside of the classroom - i.e., your world is bigger than your high school and 3) there are many valuable learning opportunities associated with ECs that can’t be obtained in the classroom and they expect you to be actively taking advantage of what opportunities you do have to grow, be challenged, etc…
So, any EC that meets any of those objectives is worth mentioning. 3-4 is more than enough. You aren’t expected to fill in all the spaces they provide (though some poor misguided students do, thinking that ‘more is better.’ It’s not.)
Thank you very much for your swift responses BrownParent and N’s Mom! So, I regularly attend Muay Thai Classes and perform calisthenics exercises, can I put them as extracurricular activities aswell? Also, I would like to somehow describe how yoga transformed my life. My back was pretty much a bit messed up a few years ago and I had to endure quite a bit of pain, but then after a few months of researching and performing several exercises, I was able to fix my back and relieve my back pain. So should I merge all of these 3 into one activity? Or should I list them as 3 different activities if applicable? What should I fill in the organization/leadership blank? Thanks again! Highly appreciate your responses. Oh and I can only fill in the Organization name for the Muay thai extracurricular activity, all others are performed by myself without any organization!
Oh and I also spend a fair amount of time messing around with my PC, overclocking CPUs and GPUs then checking whether they are stable or not, making game script modifications, and fixing other people with their slow PCs. Is this also an extracurricular activity? Thanks!
Think about which of these is most important to you - not just amount of time, but the things that really matter to you and to which you devote your energy.
Muay Thai classes is certainly an EC. So is yoga if you do it regularly and it’s important to you. (I’d wrap the calisthenics into the yoga…) PC repair and upgrading is certainly an EC (used to be repairing cars in the old days…) if you have developed some expertise in this area.
Not everyone has leadership activities - many artists, hobbyists and athletes are just plain good at what they do and put in a great many hours - and that’s enough for even the top schools if they are high achieving in their area(s). People agonize over whether to start clubs so they can create leadership positions for themselves, or stay in clubs they hate so they can get the coveted ‘secretary’ job. Spare yourself the silliness. If you have leadership activities, that’s nice. If not, do what you love, do it well, and don’t obsess about it.