<p>Thursday will be my first day at a commuter college. This means that, since I don't have any plans, my natural tendency is going to be to go to class and simply go home after. I'll be living at home in NY attending CUNY.</p>
<p>The thing is, I want to transfer after 2 years, so that of course is my biggest incentive to be active socially. This means I have one year and one semester to do things before I have to submit my application. How do I:</p>
<p>1) find extracurricular activities that will make my transfer application impressive, aside from my school's clubs and organizations and whatnot.
2) find a job/internship
3) otherwise break the tendency to go home right after class?</p>
<p>Will your school have any sort of club fair? Some sort of off-campus student involvement program? At my school they have a free breakfast the first Wednesday of every month for commuters, maybe your school has something like that as well.</p>
<p>The best way to avoid this is to not be a commuter.</p>
<p>The second best way is to stay on campus until you need to go back home. You can do this by</p>
<p>A. Making friends in your class and going out to eat lunch with them after class ends.
B. Joining a club or sport that plays in-between your classes or slightly after your classes.
C. The job or internship is what will look impressive to your application to transfer(Other than good grades, or community service, or if you do something out of the ordinary). Actually, I believe it is done mostly or solely on grades.
D. You can even go to the library and study(hopefully with other people) so you wouldn’t go back home and study if you needed to.
E. You can go to the gym after class and run or work out and talk to fellow students.</p>
<p>Study groups were awesome for me in CC. Pretty much the only time I could hang with school friends, since we all lived far apart from each other. </p>
<p>To be honest, I never really cared about making friends…it was typically pretty tough, as most of the night class people were much older than me and not interested in a social life at college. It got me out of that high school “hanging out” mentality and pushed me towards an adult “working” mentality. I’ve worked harder in the past two years than my entire four years at high school. There were definitely lonely times, but now I’m transferring, so I’ll get a chance to have a social life in college. It may work out the same way for you…but if not, be prepared to work a bit to make some good friends.</p>
<p>Only thing that ever truly bugged me was the drive. It took me over an hour to get to school sometimes. Bleh.</p>
<p>I’m not really concerned about a social life and filling up my time between classes and stuff like that (well, of course I am, but that’s a different thread). I’m mostly concerned about putting something impressive on my transfer resume, which is kind of hard to do since my school doesn’t have much of a social or academic atmosphere, I mean, compared to much better schools, where it is easier to do well and go to a really good graduate school.</p>
<p>
Not any I’m aware of. I don’t need special treatment or programs, though. A student at a CC might have that, and I want to do better than the average CC student or transfer applicant. I just need to find a way to find some good extracurriculars (better than just any club to put on my application) on my own, which I don’t know how to do. It doesn’t have to be college-oriented, either. For example, how do some high-schoolers have such brilliant things on their application? Where do they find this stuff?</p>
<p>
Like I said, the only thing that really concerns me now (on your list) is C, but that wasn’t very helpful since I don’t know how to find a good activity to participate in–to put on my application, not to spend more time on campus socially. The internship office, or whatever it’s called, isn’t helpful to me either because the opportunities are for upperclassmen.</p>
<p>Well I can’t think of anything besides getting a job or asking a professor if you can assist them with research. Even if you’re just getting coffee for them you can say “I assisted a professor in research about XYZ.”</p>
<p>Other than that just get the best grades you can, do things that show you’d be a positive contribution to a school’s student body and enjoy yourself.</p>
<p>1) Who says the extracurricular must be through the school? Have you considered a local chess club or something else recreational?
2) I would advise writing that one off, or set up a side business.
3) The fact you go home after class indicates that you are more comfortable outside of college than in college; I would not make a big thing about it.</p>