Hi, I am a sophomore right now and I am having a kinda-ish crisis with my extracurriculars. I am already a sophomore and I only have a good few extracurriculars. As of right now, I am the secretary of my school’s Star Wars club, I am starting the Science Olympiad team, and I do editing on Wikipedia in my free time. I feel that I am running out of time for science olympiad and I will be out of high school before it fully gets running. My two other extracurriculars probably won’t be good enough for any college. I go to a small high school so it’s hard because there isn’t a lot of clubs that interest me. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
Hmmmm. You don’t have a crisis. You are doing more than enough.
First off, find things of interest and where you are making an impact you can quantify.
Never heard of a Star Wars club…that will pique an interest.
You are starting a team. That’s leadership and easy to quantify…ie how many members did you bring in, how did the team do in competition.
A hobby is updating Wikipedia…maybe you can note how many updates you make a week.
ECs are about quality and interest (yours) - not a about volume.
Do you or will you have a part time job ? If so, another good one.
I see no crisis. Make an impact and keep up the great work.
2 Likes
I have several pieces of advice.
First, relax. Your grades are very important for applying to universities. Having good references is also important, and this comes partly from getting along with people, treating people fairly, and keeping up with class work. ECs are less important. ECs are mostly one way that the really top schools (Harvard, Stanford level) decide from among a long list of applicants with essentially perfect academic records. However, you can get into very good universities with very little in the way of ECs.
Secondly, a few ECs that you do very well is just right. You do not need a long list. Think about how to make the Science Olympiad team better for everyone who participates. This might become a very good EC if you can make a success of the activity. The point is to do whatever you do well, and to make the activity better for everyone. Making things better for everyone is really what leadership is about, and listening can be a big part of this. You are not likely to make a meaningful impact in every one of ten ECs – it is just not realistic.
Your ECs do not need to have anything to do with your high school. There are likely to be a variety of outside activities that you could do. A part time job is a very good EC. Volunteering is a good EC. Some students for example get good ECs volunteering through their church or through boy scouts or girl scouts.
You also might want to read the blog on the MIT admissions website called “applying sideways”. This may be written from the perspective of MIT admissions, but applies to any of the top universities in the US. The point as I understand it is to do what you want to do, and do it very well. This is exactly the approach that I took (a long time ago) to get accepted to MIT. Several people that I knew used the same approach to get accepted to very good graduate programs (including Ivy League level graduate programs), mostly after attending a very good but much lower ranked university (maybe top 100, maybe not quite top 100) for their bachelor’s degree.
Of course after graduating from MIT I found myself working with very good coworkers who graduated from a very long list of universities. You do not need to attend MIT or Harvard or Stanford in order to have a good life or to have a positive impact on the world.
4 Likes
You have been reading too many CC and Reddit posts from students who are either the biggest overachievers in the USA or are exaggerating (CC and Reddit get both types). The vast majority of students out there have a far more normal EX load. Your EC list is pretty good, compared to the standard applicant to the vast majority of colleges out there.
There are around 2,000 non-profit 4 year colleges. At least 700 of them provide a world-class education. The majority of these will not even look at your ECs. As @DadTwoGirls wrote - only colleges which are trying to choose 1,000 acceptances from 40,000 applicants start requiring super achievements to be considered. However, these are really only 20-30 colleges.
Even for many of the so-called “T-50” colleges, your ECs would be above average for the students who are admitted. My nephew is a sophomore at UCLA. His ECs were Band and a (single) lab internship. Most of the students I know who were accepted to UIUC, Wisconsin, UCSD, UFL, Michigan, and many other colleges had ECs which were no more extensive than yours.
Finally, as you proceed through your high school years - some advice:
A. Enjoy high school - don’t waste these years obsessing about “how can I get into a prestigious college”? There is so much to enjoy and experience at this stage in your life.
B. College admissions is a bad goal. Your goal should be doing well in life, and college is merely the next stage after high school. That brings us to the next piece of advice
C. The college you attend should be the best college for YOU. You do your best at high school, and invest in all parts of your life (with special focus on academics!). As you hit the end of your junior year, you take stock of your high school years. What you accomplish, your academic interests and strengths (and weaknesses), your outside interests and passions, you social life and activities, should all be the format for the type of college on which you should focus. This brings the last piece of advice:
D. When you start looking at colleges, your primary criteria should be based on the question “is this college good for me?”. Do not search for colleges using criteria based on the question “am I good enough for this college?”.
In summary - your ECs more than good enough for 95% of all colleges, and are competitive for many of the rest.
Now go back to enjoying your Winter Break.
5 Likes