<p>I?m a junior, would love to go to JHU My grades, APs, test scores, etc. are all good, what I?m worried about are my ECs. I have a few, but almost none of them are academic.</p>
<p>KEY Club- freshman year only </p>
<p>Science fair- 1st state in chem. Freshman year</p>
<p>Salsa club- all years, we won 1st at state foreign language farl last year, looking for a repeat (I also currently run the club)</p>
<p>NHS- fairly active member, do a lot of tutoring with emigrant/ underprivileged children</p>
<p>Volunteer at the zoo herp aquarium & hospital- well over 400 hours</p>
<p>Free the Children- very active member, larges youth run non-profit organization, we are currently raising money ($10,000) to build a school in Sierra Leon</p>
<p>Field hockey (JV) freshman and sophomore</p>
<p>Lacrosse- all years, JV & V</p>
<p>Is it going to weaken my chances if I don?t have more academic ECs? Is thee anything specific they look for in ECs?</p>
<p>There is no prescribed formula for EC's. You should do what you are interested in/enjoy. What will count is how you convey how you spent your time on your essays. As Admissions_Daniel has said before, you can always send in an EC resume to further explain your ECs (e.g. if there are strange acronyms etc.). There is no need to worry about what you are doing. Clearly you are involved. Plus, I'm not sure what you mean by academic extracurriculars. Its extra-curricular- outside of the normal curriculum ;)</p>
<p>thanks for the response. It's just that most of my friends are involved in FBLA, debate, written assessment, science Olympiad, quick recall, or all of the above. I've always tried to focus really hard on my grades, then do fun stuff for ECs. I just started getting worried that this was putting me "behind"</p>
<p>EC's should have some kind of overall similarity -- a common factor per say. It looks rather impulsive if you just join random clubs so your resume looks good -- and it actually has the opposite effect on admissions officers. Freshman year is the usual exception -- you have no idea what to expect. </p>
<p>Ec's should also match up with your personality and your passions. Forcefully doing something that you don't enjoy so it looks good is a Big no no. </p>
<p>And you should definitely send in a resume. Listing some activities on a piece of paper really undervalues the kind of person you might be. Remember that college admissions officers are people like you, and they want to know why they should admit you. Therefore, you should convery a good sense of yourself, and a piece of paper with long lists will definitely not do that. A resume with detailed explanations of your involvement, however, will.</p>
<p>Good luck with Admissions. And you do not have to worry about that academic factor at all.</p>
<p>Ec's should also match up with your personality and your passions. Forcefully doing something that you don't enjoy so it looks good is a Big no no.
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<p>I beg to differ. EC's don't necessarily have to have a common factor, because people like a lot of different things. What does matter, however, is the DEPTH of your involvement in each. If you do many things that are scattered and don't really commit to any of them, adcoms may look down on that. However, if your EC's cover various areas but you also have strong leadership positions in each, that can work to your advantage.</p>
<p>Oh c'mon...be realistic here. How many clubs could you join and get involved deeply in each of them assuming they had no common factor? I doubt that anyone can join more than 3 different clubs (say Athletics, Music and Academics, so...Varsity Soccer, Honor Band/Orchestra Ensembles, and Nationally ranked on exams such as USAMO, AIME). And I've tried -- it was impossible. I tried varsity team, honor bands, and toughest courseload in sophmore year and I was getting 4 hours of sleep max. Needless to say, I could not get involved deeply in all 3 as much as I wanted to. </p>
<p>And by the way, leadership isn't that important. Student leadership is so overrated, and often is redundant, as non-leaders can almost always do the same thing. If you were a good candidate for a top school, you would have done something and given even more effort even if you weren't a leader.</p>
<p>You're entitled to your own opinion, I'm just saying I disagree. Just because you had difficulty balancing it doesn't mean other people couldn't. One example, a friend of mine was a varsity cheerleader, Red Cross Club president, French Honor Society president, and some kind of regional FBLA officer. Also an incredibly smart girl. She's a freshman at Harvard now. Maybe she's an exception, but many people commit themselves strongly to multiple activities. Myself included. It's not impossible.</p>
<p>I agree that you don't need to have a formal leadership position to be committed to an activity. But the designation does look good to a certain extent.</p>
<p>everyone is different, and many people were presidents of 3 or more clubs at our school while holding many vices presidencies in other clubs, usually the leadership positions are occupied by the same people though...and they don't quite do anything different than the members, the only thing that they do different is they organize and that they know how to take care of the technical things and that's about it. so relatively speaking being a leader of one organization and being a leader in 5 organizations is practically the same (the initial trouble is the difficulty in getting to know how the organization, city, and school functions, once you know that it's as easy to organize through contacts of one club as it is through 5 clubs), or is it just that the clubs in our school are extremely lenient lol</p>
<p>Okay -- let's say I'm biased a bit from the experience at my school. At my school, the leaders do close to absolutely nothing -- especially in clubs, and even the higher ranked clubs like National Honor Society. The most "leadership" thing they probably ever had to do was call out times for meetings and collect money for some random thing. </p>
<p>No offense to the girl who went to Harvard, but Red Cross Club and French Honor Society mean absolutely nothing in our school. FBLA and Cheerleader I will definitely say that those are more time-consuming clubs. Athletes often have daily 3 hour practices after school, and FBLA I hear consumes time a lot after school. </p>
<p>I don't think you understand the depth of my extracurriculars. The only reason I had a difficult time was because sophmore year was an experimental year for my limits. Why don't you try 4 hours of sports practice, then 2 hours of music practice, and 1~3 hours of homework every day? That in addition to volunteering and music lessons. I consider my extra-curriculars to be top-notch -- and they are the only things I'm really proud of. The other things -- I humbly consider mediocre when compared to the rest of the world: 2200 SAT, 785 SAT II average for 4 tests, 3.6~7 GPA. </p>
<p>I will agree to that in my original post, I forgot to mention depth, which you mentioned later on. I assume that depth comes along with every activity one does, or that person shouldn't even bother with the activity. An ideal lookout, but it's what I exhibit in my community. Screw the rest who don't.</p>
<p>i guess my school isn;t the only one w/ clubs w/ extreme leniency hehe =D yup, dedication is probably worth more; from personal experiences, atleast for the high ranking club offices they are usually chosen not based on dedication but rather on what the individuals can offer like knowing the school staff members and etc. o.O being part of the rc club, i really do think we are doing quite a bit in our school-> blood drives and 2 oncampus + 1 offcampus fundraiser in 1 month o.O but i agree that the high ranking officers probably dedicate less time into the club than some of the lower ranking officers or members for most clubs...all we offer is gettting everything done in the correct and legal way lol since no one else in the club knows who to contact and how to do that</p>
<p>this might be deviating a tiny bit..but jovenes132 said that if you have a lot of ECs, you should send in a resume. well, i thought a resume was required anyway. i have a friend who was just accepted ED brown who told me that you should send in an "activity sheet" to show off your ECs instead. jovenes132, EC guru, could you explain the diff between an activity sheet and resume for me? i'm confused.
if i don't get any answers, i guess i'll just post a new thread. but i would appreciate your comments.</p>
<p>They are basically the same thing, but a resume probably goes into greater depth. A resume is not required (all you have to do is fill out either the JHU app or the common app), but it can help if you are involved in activities that are unique to your school or city.</p>
<p>Terrapin -- I was already accepted under ED for class of '11</p>
<p>A resume goes into much deeper depth. Admissions wants to see a more human side, and that's what a resume reveals. More of this can be found on JHU's interactive blog.</p>
<p>The activity sheet, I presume, is the space to list activities, the hours, the years, and a VERY SHORT description. At least, this is what the Hopkins activity sheet is. This is under the "Extracurricular experiences" section of the application. IMO, it was stupid to list activities that would basically mean nothing and undervalue the true meaning, so I did attach a resume -- a 3 page one with detailed explanations.</p>