<p>Hi, I'm an Indian living in the UAE planning to apply to some US colleges for the class of 2016. I was wondering what sort of extracirriculars would be looked upon by schools as good, since we do not have contests like Intel or Siemens here. Should they be broad ranged and/or would colleges give any important to local competitions/awards that they may not be familiar with? Would anyone care to give an input?</p>
<p>US universities are unlikely to be familiar with local awards from anywhere, including within the US. You need to try to be as descriptive as possible with them.</p>
<p>For Ivies and other top schools, they get many international applicants with national achievements, such as participation on their country’s academic olympiad teams (math, bio, physics, chem, informatics).</p>
<p>But of course, there are other ways to impress these schools–whether through leadership, volunteer work, research, inventions, anything.</p>
<p>Also, I have another question: do you need an objective body to qualify or merit your extra-cirriculars?</p>
<p>To be more specific, I have taught myself a variety of programming languages and do some web design work from time to time but I have no way of certifying it except for the fact that I “can”. Another similar example is: my friend and I are making a robot on our own over the summer but there are no contests or anything of the like to enter the robot in so we cannot get any proper recognition for it. Will colleges take both of these into whole-hearted consideration or disregard them because they haven’t been conferred upon with any honours?</p>
<p>bumpity bumpity</p>