<p>To be fair DrGoogle, whether my counselor was wrong or not I am very pleased with my college choices available to me and so perhaps I was right not to list them. On the flip side to what you said, sometimes places like CC give off this impression that only the top 20 schools can land you a successful career which isn’t the case at all. I guess it just helps to have all possible suggestions and then decide for yourself.</p>
<p>Too bad, Eric, that you got bad advice from your GC about what to share in your application. I’m glad you are pleased with where you got in, but I can also tell you that if I’d been asked to interview you and you had mentioned the mustang, I’d have spent a lot of time talking about that because I’m very tired of hearing about math team, the school paper and the school orchestra. Not to denigrate kids who do those things - it’s very hard work and many of them really are passionate about those activities - but many more of them are doing it because they think it looks good and unless they’ve accomplished something really exceptional, there isn’t much new there that isn’t being done by hundreds of other applicants. The take away here is that writing what you think adcoms want to hear is generally a bad idea.</p>
<p>To the OP and most other HS students: the issue here isn’t the arms race for supposedly “good” ECs but the bad advice you’ve been given about their importance! Go re-read post #13 by M’s Mom. I’m also an HYP interviewer.</p>
<p>There is so many myths about ECs that is just accepted as TRUE by GCs and HS students.</p>
<p>To the OP: while your seem to resent and/or regret your wasted time on meaningless ECs, you should probably also know that those meangless ECs were almost 99% meaningless in your eventual college evaluations that got you in or not into your targeted colleges. That’s the real tragedy.</p>
<p>Good ECs have inherent value. Bad ECs should be left to die on the vine. Period. No laundry list of clubs/affiliations will raise a single eyebrow. No one cares if you have 50 or 500 volunteer hours. The HS admins who try to nudge or intimidate you with these things? All bogus.</p>
<p>ECs don’t make you stand out in the college admissions game. Truly “stand out” accomplishments, whether truly original ECs or some “story” or just great academic achievement, will get you noticed. Not the daddy-obtained internship, not the “founder of club blah-blah” when fifty already exist in your school, not the junket to smooth a soccer pitch in Mexico and then spend the rest of the time at the beach or tourist shops, not the $4000 spent on some Ivy summer session.</p>
<p>I got into all schools applied including multiple Ivies. My ECs? Was a student JROTC leader and I washed dishes at a restaurant. Beyond this, no other clubs – and I played sports w/the dudes in the neighborhood. Why did I stand out? My unusual story – not a laundry list of clubs.</p>
<p>
So true … and in addition, DOING what you think adcoms want to see you do is also generally a bad idea. ECs would not be boring, a waste of time, or take you away from what you want to do … if … your ECs are what you want to do. Lots of ECs can look good to schools if done with commitment and passion. </p>
<p>To be fair there is a harsh side of my comment. If in your spare time you just like to hang out and goof around with your friends … there is absolutely nothing wrong with that … you’d be correct that the HYPMC’s and AWS’s of the world will not look to highly on your ECs … but it’s likely true that you’re not driven in a way that those schools are looking for in their students. The OPs interest in restoring cars could be a fine EC and evolve into a lot of very interesting activities … an interesting ECs do not have to be editor of the school paper, president of a club, and math contests (nothing wrong with these ECs either … but they are examples of ECs some students pursue not because they love the activity but because they think it will look good colleges).</p>
<p>Let me try this another way. Every year there will be numerous threads started by students asking what ECs they should do. To be honest when I see that question in a totally open ended fashion I think there are two likely scenarios (both bad) … 1) the student is looking for things that will look good for colleges … or 2) they have no interests outside of school work. On the other hand if someone started a thread saying something like I love restoring cars how do I make this an EC then I would have a very different reaction … the student has a interest outside of school and thoughts on how to expand on that interest might be helpful.</p>
<p>I wish more kids would be confident enough to be themselves and let the college admissions fall out however they fall out … that’s certainly the advice we gave our kids in high school; challenge yourself academically, do your best, and find things you like to do to keep busy.</p>
<p>3togo said "Every year there will be numerous threads started by students asking what ECs they should do. " in order to be noticed by admissions officers.</p>
<p>I’ll say this: if the student has to ask, then already, the game has been lost.</p>
<p>T2, that’s great, i appreciate some of your points, but not all kids have an unusual story like you. Some kids are, to their detriment (sarcasm intended) upper middle class. They haven’t had challenges. They are normal. (and your unusual experience doesn’t make you better than them). They work hard and participate in clubs. Yes, some are laundry lists, but not always. I think everyone–including adcoms, apparently–has to stop this rush to judgment.</p>
<p>As for the overseas community service: yes, some of those are how you describe, definitely. But some of those programs are intense, live-in, learn the language, learn to communicate with people with lives different from your own experiences. They aren’t impressive to adcoms, because the experiences are bought. On the other hand, they can be incredibly valuable to the participants. I surely hope adcoms can distinguish between the two kinds of experiences (the one you describe and the one I describe) because if not they are being unfair to some students, who might be genuinely interested in language, anthropology, geography, natural resources, etc.</p>
<p>Let me say that I am sending my daughter on one of those trips in full knowledge that the colleges won’t be impressed. I am sending her on the trip because it’s right for my child.</p>
<p>I do understand your point, and the kids should be doing what is natural, not creating the laundry list. I agree with that 100%.</p>
<p>It does seem that there is a lot of conflicting info out there. I don’t think I really understood that what we might think of as a hobby could be an EC. I thought it might need to be something more official, president of this club, founder of that…just the laundry list we are being warned against here. lol It is all so confusing. My D is just finishing her freshman (HS) yr and and we are trying to navigate the HS yrs.<br>
I hear you when you say that having a list of clubs won’t help, but hen we look at the ‘Accepted!’ stats, there is often that list of EC’s. That may not be what got them in, but there it is. We’ve advised D not to sign up for things just because they may look good, and not to overwhelm herself (she’s in IB and has lots of Homework, and in marching band)…so she tried to limit the number of things she signed up for this year. She signed up for a couple things, but they never seemed to actually meet (partly due to mid-year changes in the school’s schedule). So then she ended up not really involved in anything…missed signing up for one thing to sign up for another that didn’t pan out. </p>
<p>I do wonder about job vs community service for her. She will be required to do community service once she starts her Jr yr, and I have read that colleges ‘don’t like it’ when applicants don’t start that community service until they are required to do it. Should she focus more on that and less on job hunting?</p>
<p>My 2 cents, for whatever that’s worth: a kid with a job these days is impressive. It’s not easy finding a job. In no way does community service trump a job.</p>
<p>I agree with this **** to the max, yo.</p>
<p>The only system I can see that actually works well is judging an applicant solely based on academic achievement. Like the UK.</p>
<p>*I wish more kids would be confident enough to be themselves and let the college admissions fall out however they fall out … that’s certainly the advice we gave our kids in high school; challenge yourself academically, do your best, and find things you like to do to keep busy. *</p>
<p>I’ve got a D15, and I think this is the best advice I could give her. I don’t want her to lose her high school years in the pursuit of some imagined perfect college where she would spend the following four years. Life is life. Every stage is precious. As long as she’s busy with things she enjoys (and not just being lazy), then I’m going to let her drive the bus.</p>
<p>Yes, and I have no interest getting my kids into HYP, etc. We aren’t buying into that hype either. A good school that suits them, yes. A school that’s all about status and trying to prove you are the best, no.</p>
<p>@Redpoint: I re-read my note and see I may have been unduly harsh regarding overseas service trips. Inherently, I believe most of them are very enriching for participants. </p>
<p>However, I also believe (my opinion only) that 1) the purveyors of some of these events are very profit driven and therefore, over sell the “boost” the event has on the kids’ eventual resume/application and 2) the participants and their families feel the pressure to do these when a kid working as a camp counselor or lifeguard or @ Dairy Queen for the summer – is equally viewed. I personally, may get my D1 to an overseas trip to Europe for personal enrichment – but I know it won’t “grab” any reader at a top school.</p>
<p>How they can benefit the student is exactly along the lines you describe – they reinforce the picture that the student is genuinely a hungry learner and a true explorer. This will be reinforced by other areas of the application – at least to the few colleges that evaluate such things.</p>
<p>This goes to my other point. Most colleges – even very good ones w/low tough rates, are still only using scores/transcript to admit students. A very good school in my locale is Michigan State University. Is it a so-called “top 25” school? No. But it’s certainly become a destination school and their standards for admit have risen dramatically. The 3.6 GPA, 25 ACT instate student will most likely be rejected by MSU. I offer that this student’s community or overseas service, while not wasted due to personal enrichment, won’t be an evaluation factor for the sort of school he/she eventually attends.</p>
<p>For a top college, those meaningless ECs are meaningless to them too. Instead of pursuing the mundane, do something really cool and innovative. It will enrich your life so much more and stand out during college admissions. It’s a win win.</p>