Extracurriculars

Applying to College
1

Hey guys I am currently a sophomore in high school and I have an important question.

The problem I am finding with my extracurriculars is consistency.

Extracurriculars done in the past:
– Cross Country 2 Year (Freshman and sophomore)
– Track 1 year (Freshman)
– Robotics (1 year Freshman)
– Science Olympiad 2 year
– Business Professionals of America 2 year
– Math team 1 year (Sophomore)
I have 36 volunteer hours.

It is my sophomore year and I have reached a dilemma. I was planning to quit track and do cross country all 4 years. But cross country conflicts with robotics team too much and I can’t do it. I haven’t done robotics team sophomore year due to cross country. I want to go into engineering though. Should I quit doing all sports and focus on robotics team? If you want to go into engineering does doing a sport 4 years even if your bad at it help??
What clubs am I missing? Am I doing too much?

2

Unless you are a recruited athlete, a sport is just another EC - no better, no worse. If you’d rather do robotics, do robotics.

3

You should do something for exercise just for your health. Track or whatever. But robotics does match your career/major aspirations better. At my kids’ school, cross country is a fall sport, and Robotics is most intense in the January through March timeframe. (I was a mentor one year, so I understand why it is hard to do anything else during build season!). My kid in Robotics did club fencing at a club where it was okay to miss some practices (low key). She fenced year around, but just didn’t go as much during robotics season and when she had her beloved quiz bowl matches. Finding a low key sports commitment might be the way to go.

4

If I were you, I’d do robotics.

5

Do whichever you prefer.

6

I am not an expert, but I don’t think that extracurriculars make a huge difference unless you are recruited or have won world awards.

7

It depends on the school. But at most schools it won’t matter if a student does sports or robotics – but schools do like to see you do some activities outside of classwork.

8

^^ Both sports and robotics are not classwork at all.

Anyways, you need sports. Just for your health’s sake. I suggest you keep up math and robotics, and do the others if you have time. It really depends oon how strict the clubs are at your school though. If they’re really strict, just try to do stuff on your own time.

9

if you are applying to large state schools like Penn State or WVU they mainly look at GPA and SAT/ACT score. Look at websites of the schools where you plan to apply to see what they want to se in your application.