<p>What the above poster said cannot be emphasized enough, DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO!!! Adcoms would way rather have you write an essay about one or two things that you were extremely passionate about and loved doing. If you can tell a story and show just how much you cared about these things colleges will fall in love with you. Many people think it’s all about the extracurriculars, and how much stuff you fit into your year while that’s simply not the case. Coincidentally, your major should be something you want to do. So yes, it is better to take classes and extracurriculars that you want to do. By transitive property, that would mean you should take classes that emphasize your major. The problem is, a large percentage of people take on majors for the money, because their parents want them to, because they don’t want to disappoint others, etc, etc. If that’s how you want to live your life, then go for it, there is no problem with that. If you want to better your chances with a college however, do something you want to do. I made the mistake of volunteering at a hospital (to see if I could see myself working as a doctor) and absolutely abhorred it. Now I’m locked in to 100 hours and still have not found the strength to complete them. In my case, this will be mentioned on my college application but I will way rather be talking about other things, like how I (hopefully) will be going to UC Davis this next summer to take on the COSMOS program. I know I would love it and will enjoy learning about math and science, I could easily fill the requirements for writing about Extracurriculars on just this one thing, and colleges would much rather see that than going on and on about how you were the president of so and so, and played whoodywhatty for 5 years, and were in these 5 clubs, yadda yadda. </p>
<p>Tl;dr DO WHAT YOU WANT! At the very least, do something that you’re passionate about in your spare time. It doesn’t even need to be “official” (sports, clubs) to impress colleges. BTW if you plan on taking clubs, do one or two and aspire to reach a leadership position in it. Taking five or six will eat up a lot of time, will show little or no devotion/passion to one thing, and will eat up your $$$ (if your school requires money for clubs). One $10 club is a lot better than $60 and no free lunches.</p>