<p>I wish.
Anyway, in sophomore year (09-10) I was President of my school's engineering/robotics club and co-prez of another team at my school. The former club was in its first year. However, the latter is a club in which I am insanely involved (~5 hrs/wk), and the team has won national-level awards for a few years now. Now I didn't pursue being Prez of Robotics due to time constraints, but I don't think I can get a leadership position in the latter club due to a lot of political crap (among kids and among adults) that's happened. Will this affect my applications for selective colleges? BTW I'm still quite involved in both clubs.</p>
<p>bump10char</p>
<p>Insanely involved is 5 hours a week? </p>
<p>Anyways yeah not being president will hurt your application, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Really only might become a factor in a borderline application at a holistic school I’d think. One thing you can do to compensate, which you alluded to, is just to perform very well in your club. Colleges know that the best students/athletes aren’t always the ones awarded captainships. Like you said a lot of it is politics, and another part of it is leadership ability which colleges won’t really care too much about unless you are framing yourself as a student leader. Of course they like to see leaders but they recognize many people are too shy or too outgoing (I’ve found the captains/presidents are generally a delicate balance between the two- reserved is probably a good word).</p>
<p>It kinda sucks because I’m generally either really shy or really outgoing, depending on my level of comfort in something. Like for golf I was seen as kinda an unofficial captain, because I was good friends and open with a lot of my teammates and underclassmen. Contrasted with SciOly where I kinda just let my performance do the talking. So I’m definitely not official captain material :(.</p>
<p>i guess insane wasn’t the right word.</p>
<p>5 hours a week for something isn’t a lot… I put in 20-30hrs a week for theatre since I’m a leader… Its about the same as a part-time job. And on saturdays too.</p>
<p>HAHA Wow, just goes to show you what perspective is. I stay after school more than the teacher for that club. Guess it wasn’t as much as I thought.</p>
<p>Any successful robotics team that I know of requires 20+ hours/week. More during build/ship/competition. Do you compete? Is your team affiliated with US FIRST? You need to be clear on your application what your team’s goals were. If you were competing with US FIRST and your time commitment was 5 hours/week this isn’t going to look so hot. If your club was instructional then that would be more reasonable.</p>