Is listing only one EC of four years with leadership in college applications sufficient for colleges(weak, okayish, strong)?
“Weak” Colleges: If you mean lower ranked schools, then yes it’s fine. They probably don’t care about your activities anyways. All they want is a strong academic record.
“Okayish and Strong” Colleges: Mid to high ranking schools will care a bit. It is fine as well if you put a lot of time and effort into the one EC.
Have you ever thought of trying anything new and different? It might be a refreshing experience because for me personally, I would probably get burnt out if I were doing something for four years,tens of hours each week.
A lot of things (some you probably may not have thought of) qualify as EC’s. If you look back at what you do outside of school, there is probably more than one thing you do.
@rdeng2614 i appreciate your feedback but how would colleges compare me to kids who list sh*tload of ECs?
One EC can be good enough for the most competitive colleges. It just depends on what it is and what your achievements were in the EC. EC is anything you do outside school that occupies your time. It does not need to an organized activity. It can be a self generated one (like learning to code or painting). You could have read all the great novels of the Western world. You could have taught yourself French or become a world class juggler. You could have become a connoisseur of fine something or other.
@lostaccount thanks
@rdeng2614 @lostaccount what if it is swimming and i am okayish but i put time into it?
At this point it is what it is. I would say if you are a junior and have time to do something else, maybe some community service (ex. a Habitat build, work at a soup kitchen etc.) it might be rewarding personally and could show that you have other interests.
Yes, if you swim you can put that down as an EC. It can be for your own enjoyment or for recreation/health, etc. Anything you spend time on that is not a school requirement. It may have nothing to do with school at all. It could be horse back riding or knitting. Or weight lifting. Or it can be babysitting.
Top schools want quality over quantity.
They’d probably prefer the student who dedicated himself to 1 activity and did well in it rather than the student who has 15 EC’s but not a lot of depth in any of them.
It is perfectly fine to put down swimming. Are you on the school team? If so, that would explain a lot as high-school athletes have to devote a lot of time to sports for practices, meets etc.
Also, agree with the above posters have said. Branch out a bit (perhaps this summer?), try some other activities (even perhaps related to swimming such as a teacher for kids, or coaching elementary-school swim teams etc.) and see if you like it. Regardless, try something new and you might find something that you love.
According to your other posts, you’re currently in the middle of your 10th grade. Is this so?
You mentioned MIT as a “dream” school. If you’re serious about applying to very competitive schools, you need to excel at a super difficult curriculum while being engaged elsewhere. For MIT, I suggest STEM related pursuits. A sport is fine – but if all you have is a sport and a transcript, you’ll be outmatched by others who have the transcript, a sport and tons of supporting STEM related stuff.
You also asked about “starting a non-profit” before (which I derided). You need to be honest w/yourself – are you truly a leader? A great leader starts as a great follower. Perhaps you should venture outwards and try some other things
Let me describe your competition to top universities by describing a student from my daughter’s high school. She was nationally ranked in top 20 in her sport, she had won over 40 science awards including international and national, she had conducted research at a university over a year, she was a featured speaker, she founded a nonprofit that raised lots of money for a charity, she was a leader in student government, and I could go on and on. These are students who push themselves to excellence and recognition for years. Your one activity with mediocre results just doesn’t compare if you are aiming for the very top universities, no matter how much time that activity takes.
The more ECs the better for the most part. But if a student does 20 different ECs and doesn’t stick with any of them for more than a year, it doesn’t help that much. But if there are a small number of activities and they stick with them for three or four years, it looks better.
This is so wrong. Generally a couple of in school ECs, something outside school, and some volunteering is plenty. Sports can be a tremendous time sink, but I wouldn’t drop out. If you can’t find time to swim and do something else, you probably don’t belong at a school like MIT anyway.
S1 got into Harvard and computer science at Carnegie Mellon. Was rejected by MIT, Stanford and Caltech.
He didn’t do a sport. What he did do: School ECs: state awards at Science Olympiad, Academic Team that went to nationals. On his own EC: all sorts of computer science stuff - took a class at Columbia one summer, worked for a computer development company part time during the school year and summer before senior year, wrote a program to analyze proteins for a med school professor and was acknowledged in a published paper, set up a website for another med professor, taught himself Linux, Scheme and SQL using sources on the web, got recognition for a game mod. Volunteered in the computer lab of the senior center one summer. The computer stuff all built on each other. That really was his main EC.
Younger son did Orchestra, Science Olympiad (also got state level medals) and Literary Magazine in school. Had a small business selling origami earrings outside school. Also volunteered at the senior center one summer. Did some 3D modeling and other work for my architecture firm one summer. He got into places like U of Chicago, Tufts and Vassar. (His grades and scores weren’t quite as high as brothers.)
As you can see each had a mix of activities, but not a huge number. But more than one. S1’s were much more focussed on STEM. S2 had a lot of different interests.
@mathmom i find it helpful