I am in the 10th grade, and have a 3.7 unweighted gpa in a top 100 USA high school. However, I only have 3-4 Extracurricular activities. What are some ideas for some activities? Do I need sports? What are some suggestions?
What are your current extracurriculars, how serious/accomplished are you, how much time do you put in, and how long have you been doing them?
It’s about quality, not quantity.
@renaissancedad
Robotics Club - 3 years
Piano - 9 years, Various awards
Clarinet - 5 years, started studying privately, I started Solo and Ensemble (Play for a judge and get rated).
volunteering - Food banks, Elderly Homes, Food for homeless. Hours = about 40 hours
Job in medical office - indexing/organizing papers
For volunteering, I don’t have any hours I need to complete. I do it on my free time and for the enjoyment. Not to meet a certain deadline.
the list is kind of short. I tried tennis/basketball/soccer, but I have not taken it seriously. I have only played in small leagues around my town, not for the school.
@ShyamB, it sounds like music is your pain extracurricular, and a serious one. 9 years of piano with awards plus 5 years of a 2nd instrument is a serious commitment. Not that many people actually develop significant proficiency in 2 instruments. Is music something that you intend to continue, directly or indirectly?
I played cello for 10 years before going to college many years ago. It was my dominant activity. I spent almost all my extracurricular time doing it - 3+ hours/day practicing, full day on weekends at conservatory preparatory program (orchestra + ensemble), top summer programs with college or professional level players, even some international experience. Most of the people I played with went on to top conservatories and successful professional careers, but I was academically inclined. Serious music and a top academic load were plenty, along with a few minor extracurriculars as time permitted. It was more than good enough for Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, UChicago and Penn, among others. My brother had a similar path with violin, and went to Harvard. Neither of us became professional musicians.
I know things have changed somewhat, but I suspect most adcoms at top schools still generally prefer 1-2 really good extracurriculars to a laundry list of superficial activities. Being able to prioritize shows commitment and focus.
If I were you I wouldn’t try to find new activities as much as ways to build on the ones you already have. Are there ways that you can build on your musical experience to make it more distinctive, or take it in a different direction (such as community service or leadership)? @catlover2000 has a passion for music, and is trying to enlarge on it by bringing music to senior citizens:
There are lots of different ways to expand on your interest. Don’t do it just to look good - try to find things related to your interest that truly inspire you. Adcoms are pretty good at distinguishing true passion and commitment from going through the motions.
FWIW, here’s the website of a current Harvard senior with a serious theatre arts focus (including a download for a resume):
There’s not a lot other than theatre featured. It’s clear that that’s what drives him, and where his passion lies. Why waste time on a lot of secondary activities when you have a focus like that? Not everyone is going to be so focused or so successful in one area, but I think the general point still holds.
A couple of other thoughts, assuming that music is a major interest for you:
- You are only a sophomore, so you have time to expand on this. You will have played piano for 11 years and clarinet for 7 by the time you apply to colleges, so you should be pretty proficient in both.
- It seems like you have a genuine interest in community service with the homeless and senior citizens (you note you do it for enjoyment), and have worked in a medical office. Are you interested in health care? Why not link it to your music interest. Music therapy is a growing field:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/health/music-therapy/
I don’t know if you are located near a major medical center, but bringing music into the hospital is becoming more and more commonplace. Mt. Sinai has the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Queens, for example:
http://www.musicandmedicine.org
It’s a great essay topic, and if you can get some experience, even better. It would link your music and community service themes, and make both more powerful. Add on robotics (especially if you keep it up for 2 more years) and you would have a pretty balanced group of extracurriculars.
- If you do go the route of enlarging on your musical background, and if you are academically strong, consider something like the Notre Dame Leadership Seminar program in American Arts, Popular Culture and Social Change in the summer between your junior and senior years:
http://precollege.nd.edu/leadership-seminars/american-arts-popular-culture-and-social-change/
It’s a fully-funded competitive 2 week program, so it has some prestige, and it would be a great way of taking your music and community engagement interests and giving them a leadership emphasis.
You’ve got time to figure out how to build on what you already have. Going out and joining new clubs or starting new activities is unlikely to get you as far in the next 2 years, and just dilutes your focus.
No you don’t need sports. You just need to be who you are with all the passion and creativity and insight that you can bring to whatever it is you enjoy doing. If it’s music, then teach music, write music, record music, perform on the street corner, research into the music traditions you love, study other music traditions that you can combine with the one you were trained in…do whatever it takes to make you a better musician and a better ambassador for music education. Ad coms do not want every student to have one sport, one volunteer activity, one leadership activity, one artistic activity…they want a class that is well-rounded, but full of unique, highly accomplished people who love their particular form of self-expression and can share it with others. Looks like you have the capacity to that!