<p>Your ECs do exactly what you want them to do - that is, they tell a story. Given your involvement in sports at the HS level, you might want to emphasize how your sports abilities or knowledge will be able to help the college community - by playing, by managing, by running fan clubs, whatever.</p>
<p>I would leave in the lawn-mowing. Anything that you have been doing year-round for the past four years shows commitment - bonus points if you did something productive with the cash (investing, saving towards a big-ticket item, paying for gas to and from volunteering, etc). </p>
<p>Continue doing what you enjoy, and talk about that. There is no ‘right’ number of ECs, and if you are really passionate about you are doing and that comes through, that does more for your application than any number of ‘filler’ clubs/ECs.</p>
<p>^Excellent advice. Like I said before, your ECs state that you are hard-working, athletic, honest, yada yada. Just follow through on that theme in your app, and you’ll have great chances.</p>
<p>I don’t think your EC’s stand out that much, possibly because most except the British internship and lawn-mowing all school founded/related if you know what I mean. I think if you did some more stuff outside the sphere of your school it would make them even better!</p>
<p>I think you have some pretty good EC’s. One thing I might recommend is, since you’re interested in politics (I am too), getting involved with your local politics (volunteer for a campaign, intern in a politician’s office, write political articles and publish them on the internet). The internship in Britain is great, but colleges might get the impression that you are just full of money and will question why you had to go all the way to Britain to do something politically when you could have done something in your own backyard, if you get what I’m saying. Good luck!</p>
<p>Your EC’s are good enough that they won’t hurt you, but they aren’t really going to make them think that you are absolutely outstanding either. Your ECs are average for accepted Duke applicants. However, if you say your grades are below average and you only have an average test score, you might not fare well at schools like Duke because while you are all around well-rounded, you don’t have a specific part of your app that is above average for duke. I’d say you have a reach(25%) chance at schools on Duke’s level.</p>
<p>So Is the month long internship in a foreign govt (100% sure I’m the only HS student who was there, a few college ones) not have a wow factor?</p>
<p>There i wasn’t just a classic intern, I did press releases, attended meetings, prepared meeting notes, and actually got involved with foreign affairs discussions</p>
<p>Well if poly science is your major then yes your ECs are above average, but i still think its weird that you would go to Britain to study government when you could go to your local, state, or even DC governments. I think you will have to explain how/why you decided to go there. You have a chance at all of your schools, but believe me, there are a decent amount of kids with governmental internships(I have one) and while your EC’s are a strong part of your app they aren’t going to make HYPS freak out. You have solid/good ECs. They will be a strong part of your app, having said that, they will only be slightly above average, if not average at schools on Duke’s level. You don’t have outstanding EC’s.</p>
<p>Yes you have a wow factor, the problem is so do a ton of kids. =/ A lot of us are in the same boat. It’s not that you and your EC’s arent great, its that there are too many other great kids. You still could get admitted to schools on dukes level, especially ED, so don’t give up, but dont expect that schools on dukes level are a sure thing</p>
<p>I chose the overseas part for the wow fact, because while lots of people work with their local state rep, and some are congressional pages, I thought a foreign internship would teach me about foreign relations and foreign governments, we all know the basics about the US Govt, but we really don’t know that much about the EU, Asia, and Latin America, so I decided to go to Europe and work with a rep who was the chaie of foreign affairs to get govt experience, international experience, and be different- is that a good explanation?</p>
<p>You have good EC’s but like everyone else has said, you need more leadership positions. Your ACT score is average for duke. But you never know, college admissions are sometimes crazy.</p>