<p>I tried googling the answer for this, but was unsucessful in finding results. I am aiming towards MIT and I am a rising sophmore who is first in my class and loves math... My problem is my school offers NO Math and Science E.C's because it is only 6 years old, so instead of joining math E.C's I have joined "arts" ones. I am a 3 season varsity runner and the varsity sports take most of my time away (6 days a week 2 hour practice per day for approximently 10 months continuously ). The clubs I do (other than drama club) usually meet once every 2 weeks, and each meeting is only 45 minutes long. Looking at people's applications to prestigious schools, I have noticed that others who have been accepted to MIT have a TON more E.C's then I do, but usually do not have sports. When colleges compare applications, do they take into account that sports take up so much more commitment / time compared to some clubs?</p>
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<p>Of course they do! They’ve done this before, you know. 
I know you’ve never applied to college before, but they’ve been reading applications for years.</p>
<p>Admissions officers are well aware of the time consuming nature of sports. And you don’t have to be a recruit for your commitment to be appreciated either. I competed in Track and Field for all four years, and it was basically all I had time for. It worked out. </p>
<p>Remember, “it’s about quality not quantity.”</p>
<p>thanks! I am sure that my E.C’s have quality ( I LOVE all the ones I do (8 including my 3 sports))!!</p>
<p>I would be surpised if your accomplishments in all 8 truly have quality. Your OP mentioned meeting for about 1.5 hours/month. Do you complete activities outside of these meetings? The best ECs are the ones where you are able to point to specific, personal achievements over a number of years of deep, continuous involvement.</p>
<p>I would suggest that you consider dropping one or two of your ECs and really concentrate on making an impact in the others.</p>
<p>Well… These are my E.C’s</p>
<p>Varsity Cross Country (best on team that is best in our 3/4 largest division)
Varsity Indoor Track (best distance; made it to level before state championships)
Varsity Outdoor Track (best distance; team is best in our county and next one over which are the best in our state)</p>
<p>Drama Club (practice 6/7 days for 1 month, 3 days a week for 3 months) I am a member of the ensemble, have had a small role, have helped with stage crew, am taking a drama class and performed (singing) solo in my school’s talent show.</p>
<p>AFJROTC (can only do it 3/4 years due to a stupid required class by state, but I was an element leader, had a bronze PT star and had a bit above basic rank)</p>
<p>Key Club (volunteered at local children’s hospital once a month and tutored at a local elementary school) I had some problems with attending meetings, but I LOVED the community service aspect!!</p>
<p>Girl Scout Gold Award/ Girl Scouts (just started gold award, it is an 80 hour leadership project equivalent to a boy scout eagle award… I have ran dances, helped teach younger scouts, and participate in many progrms)</p>
<p>Literary Magezine (I donate several pieces of writing to my school newspaper, and next year I may start help edit pieces of literature).</p>
<p>Those are my main 8 E.C’s, and each of them I am dedicated to. I LOVE running, and I am also pretty good at it. I LOVE drama club, and it is my favorite part of the day. I LOVE helping people, and hate to count the hours I spend helping, but I know I need to for college applications. I LOVE being a ROTC cadet, and am really sad I can’t do it this year, but I have to or else I may not be able to take some AP classes. I write in my spare time, so submitting it to be published was easy… Poems are my favorite :)</p>
<p>I hope I could clarify in this long post how much I love my E.C’s… I can’t stand the idea of dropping any of them!!! I am going to continue to add to them 
(maybe world language club or/ and math league!!)</p>
<p>Sorry, this is a little off-topic, but I play 5 varsity sports in high school (probably dropping one, which means I’ll possibly end up with only 4). That is in addition to weight cutting in the winter for wrestling and weightlifting in the spring/summer/fall (serious weightlifting, like 4 times a week). This is all in addition to several AP classes. </p>
<p>Because of this, I have absolutely no time for other ECs without cutting out what little downtime/relax time I have. Is that okay?</p>
<p>^Rob, you’ll be fine. They know that five sports take up a lot of time, and it’s pretty impressive…you don’t have to worry.</p>
<p>Rob1995… I think you’ll be fine, but how can you play 5 sports? I’m guessing 3 with school and 2 outside??</p>
<p>@karategirl - I apologize for doubting you. It does sound like you have eight quality ECs. Still, it sounds like you might be dropping ROTC due to schedule constraints. Similarly, your Key Club involvement might be schedule-limited as well. As a parent, I would counsel you that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Be sure to keep your grades up, especially through the first semester of your senior year.</p>
<p>If you truly have a passion for new activities and can squeeze them in to your hectic schedule, by all means do so. However, realize that adcoms tend to discount ECs started in your senior year so your application will not receive much benefit from these. But again, if they are your passions and your grades don’t suffer then go ahead.</p>
<p>@Rob1995 - Team sports are a great EC and adcoms are fully aware of the commitment they entail. My only advice to you would be to avoid referring to “downtime/relax time”. You might mean 20 minutes per week when you make this statement, but it can be interpreted as 2-3 hours of laziness every day.</p>
<p>@karategirl2005: I go to a small school that isn’t really terribly competitive, so here you can double up on some sports during the same season at our school (4 or 5 sport varsity athletes are not terribly uncommon here). I play both tennis and do track & field in the spring. For the most part, track practice takes priority over tennis if their practices overlap, but I go to both track and tennis meets, although I try to go to whatever tennis practices that I can. Same deal with the fall - I play golf and run XC. So pretty much it’s because tennis and golf are both really laidback, non-intensive sports so I have time to fit in 2 sports. If I were doing something really intense like football or baseball, no way I would be able to fit in that many sports, though. =p</p>
<p>I’m not terribly good at some of them, but I do a lot of them just for fun because being active is pretty much my favorite thing to do. Like to be honest, I’m rather god-awful at golf, but I have so much fun with it so I really like to stick with it. =)</p>
<p>Also, thanks to the others for easing my worries. Outside of athletics and maybe the occasional part-time job or couple of volunteer hours, I literally have no other ECs, so I was just kinda worried.</p>
<p>@rmldad Thanks! With Key Club, a girl from my XC Team is now the president, so I have a feeling I will be allowed to be exempt from meetings this year. With ROTC, I am fairly certain I will go back to it, but you never know. In NJ we are required to take a finance class, so rather than having ROTC count as both a practical and Computer science, I had an extra computer science, and I had to take a performing arts class, so I decided to take a drama class. My middle school cut a few advanced programs, so I will have to double up in my high school career to make it to certain APs. Luckly, I have a TON of energy… at one point (when I had drama) I would not get home until 7 (I usually get home 4:30- 5ish) and I would stay up until 10 or 11 doing H.W ( I had already done some homework at drama), so for about 4 months I had very little free time… everything revovled around track, drama, and studying. Surprisingly during this time I got my best grades ever… straight A +'s in 3 honors and 1 elective. So when I am not busy, I feel like I am wasting time. lol.</p>