“A contest anyone can enter.” Here, it’s by school, part of 9th grade, only a few get out of the school competition and to the next level. Unlike some other national competitions, ime, there isn’t a mentoring to deepen the experience. Some schools allow kids to try every year of hs. So, it’s rather like NHS- a different experience based on the hs. If a kid had stronger experiences, it might be a lower line in the Activities list.
In general, if a kid is aiming very high, I personally don’t think “a contest anyone can enter” is an “it.” It’s a snapshot,a project, not a sustained effort. It’s usually something the hs brings to the kid, not something he seeks out by himself. Some will have a different opinion.
National history day is a national program. I’m pretty sure a school not allowing grades 10-12 in their school level competition would be a violation of the regional and national rules.
Whether or not it’s an “it” for super elite colleges is a different question than what I was trying to offer: an EC for someone interested in history and academics with stories. How impressive NHD is depends quite a bit on what a student makes of it. Showing up multiple years, working on in-depth projects outside of class time, and building your academic skills in an area of interest are all good things to show colleges. Tracking down a mentor shows initiative as well. Doing the minimum to get through 9th grade social studies, not so much.
You don’t need to. Colleges aren’t expecting kids to come in with their passions and careers all tidily decided before they step foot on campus. It’s totally possible to declare a major in something that you don’t have experience with before you come to campus, and still get admitted to that major if you have to apply by school or by major.
What else is a student supposed to do besides taking classes and doing a study abroad/exchange program to express his/her interest in German, anyway? Why wouldn’t that be enough?
This isn’t about setting a major in concrete. For highly competitive colleges, it’s more about how you show your thinking in the app/supps. Or not. And the actions you took to pursue this supposed interest. It’s true OP has the courses and a month long trip. I was hoping there was a bit more to show.
It does help to have experience in the areas you’re interested in. Imagine a kid who skipped competitive math-sci in hs, had no relevant ECs, trying to sound compelling for, say, engineering. (What, “It sounds interesting?”) There are classes some hs don’t offer, that’s different. But they can still expect more than just stating some interest that seems random, when they’ve got thousands of kids lined up who do show more.
Likewise, I’m wondering what OP did with the interest in sustainability/the environment. If his other college choices are less competitive than UCB, then maybe it doesn’t matter for those.
Art is not necessarily an unpopular major relative to departmental capacity. For example, at Berkeley, the art practice major is a restricted major, requiring a 3.3 college GPA, a portfolio, and a recommendation letter to get into. This is more selective than other majors in Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science. Most just require a 2.0 GPA and/or C grades in prerequisite courses. A few other restricted ones are computer science (3.3), psychology (3.2), statistics (3.2), and economics (3.0).