Extracurriculars that aren't at school?

[Maxyend]

<p>I'm having problem thinking of ECs. I'm an international student and where I'm from we don't do sports/clubs at school. I drummed from when I was 4 until 15, piano from 8 till 15, field hockey from 4 till 15, tennis from 4 till 14(never competitive). All of this was outside of school.
The problem is that at 15 I went through trouble at school (told to leave halfway through the year) and dropped it all. Went to a school in the UK for the last two years and now I have nothing to write about for the last few years.</p>

<p>I have one hobby that I practiced quite seriously outside of school the last few years, which is photography, I've twice been chosen out of thousands of pictures by the National Geographic editor to be featured on their website. Is there a place on the common app, outside of the essays for me to mention this?</p>

<p>I also came second in the school's photography competition (would have been first place, but I initially got disqualified because they didn't believe the photographs were actually mine and so I was only added after most of the teachers had already voted).</p>

[Sue22]

<p>Photography is absolutely a legitimate EC. ECs can be anything you do for which you don’t receive academic credit. If you don’t have much to fill your application I’d put it both in the extracurricular section (photography, X # of years…) and in the awards section (National Geographic photography contest, chosen from among… and school photography contest, second place).</p>

[Rob1995]

<p>I don’t quite get what your question is, but if you are trying to ask if you can include activities that are not sponsored by the school than the answer is yes, definitely!</p>

<p>The National Geographic bit is definitely something that should be mentioned, and you can simply put down photography as an extracurricular.</p>

<p>You may be able to squeeze down your sports and music for freshman or sophomore year depending on when you did them. They count as well.</p>