Disclaimer: I am not bragging or trying to boast, I just want to improve my application
How well are my extracurriculars and how well do they convey passion and interest in a single field. Would my extracurricular profile be comparable to a student admitted to Ivy League schools?
I will describe my activities in order of importance and then list leadership and accomplishments.
FIRST Robotics: Software Lead and Team Captain: Numerous judged awards including Inspire Award and Think Award and New York State Competitions and qualification for the International Worlds Championship. ~ All Four Years
STEM Community Outreach / Mentoring: Volunteer at local events to teach coding, mechanical engineering and 3-d printing to youth interested in robotics. Also, work to create presentations to gather fundraising from corporations including Corning Inc, Cargill Salt, and ICM. ~ All Four Years
Paid 6 Week Summer Internship at Corning Incorporated: Working on machine learning and math modeling in design analysis. PS Work is proprietary can’t talk much about it. ~ 2018 Summer
Online Computer Science and Data Science Courses for Machine Learning: Taking multiple classes in programming and machine learning through Coursera and Edx throughout the year including the summer. ~ Since 2017
Housekeeper at the Budget Inn Motel: Clean rooms and provide service to customers. ~ On weekends / Family Responsibility
Debate and Oration Club: President: Compete at local tournaments, mostly just host political events in the school. ~ All Four Years
Interact Club / NHS: Help volunteer: Not a significant activity compared to my top 4 which is why it is at the bottom. ~ All Four Years
Please provide feedback on whether or not I demonstrate a spike and passion in my EC list. I intentionally made myself not well rounded in order to demonstrate passion and commitment.
Your interest is clear and the housekeeping job made me take a second look. With a 95% rejection rate, Harvard is no guarantee but you’re very strong EC wise.
I wish the words “spike” and “passion” weren’t used so often on CC. Most top colleges like depth and breadth, that willingness to expand a bit, try some new things, since they hope students will engage in various ways, during college.
A lot of stem hopefuls are involved with robotics and FIRST, where it’s available, and in stem outreach of some sort. Debate is a nice add, as is the internship. But random volunteering via NHS isn’t always as weighty as comm service that’s more consistent. So how often are these stem “events?”
I realize a lot of time is taken by the job. Anything else you do that’s not shown here?
The STEM events are like community service events where our team will volunteer at local science fairs, NY State Fair, fundraiser events. I would say during competition season we can get really involved. Sometimes on weekends were at an event for ten hours volunteering. I put this activity over NHS and interact because this activity is community service and actually aligns with my interest. I have also been student council secretary for two years and am treasurer of SADD club.
Perhaps if it wasn’t a family business you could get a stellar LOR. A similar letter from your parents won’t carry as much weight for obvious reasons. In other aspects though it’s virtually the same.
Top schools are making an effort to recognize both jobs to help the family, as well as other kinds of work to assist the family (family business, taking care of siblings or grandparent etc.)
Your EC’s are fine. No need to craft an image, be yourself. It does look, from what you have presented, that you have strong interests and have made efforts to pursue them.
By all means apply. Curious: why Harvard? I hope you are looking into many schools, types of schools, and consider fit. Good luck!