<p>I asked D about this and she said-- “What about C<strong><em>?” C</em></strong> is the name of a town she has invented, a small town utopia with pages and pages of biographical detail on the inhabitants, houses, street layout, state of the art public transport…etc. She’s been working on it for years. I don’t know if she’ll want to write an essay about it but I had never thought of it as anything but a peculiar hobby, and thanks to this thread I realized it shows a lot about her imagination, creativity, and perseverance. Thank you!</p>
<p>I handraise orphaned puppies and kittens for a local rescue group.
…:D?</p>
<p>wow, everyone at school tells me you must have a few academic extracurriculars such as mock trial, mathaletes, science club…</p>
<p>But unfortunately I don’t have any of those “academic” extracurriculars.</p>
<p>I want to get into a selective school, but now everyone is saying that I need to be captain of the Math Club to get into Columbia:/</p>
<p>NaNoWriMo. Definately going on my applications.</p>
<p>Would attending Harry Potter conferences every summer be something I can put on there since there are various pieces of academically-centered programming involved?</p>
<p>Which of these activities should I include in the application?
-Jazz Band
-been in the school band for all 4 years
-I’ve played in the pit orchestra for plays
-I’m good with computers
-cross country (I’m not a great runner :))
-National Honors Society (I’m in it but we haven’t actually done anything.)</p>
<p>I’m looking at some pretty selective schools, (i.e. Williams, Columbia, Amherst) which of these should I include?</p>
<ul>
<li>cartooning(mostly just pictures when I’m bored or for friends but will probably publish in school paper this year as well as design coloring book for local restaurant)</li>
<li>writing (written short stories for years will participate in NaNoWriMo this year)</li>
<li>camping (go to yosemite twice a year, been to most national parks in CA, OR, WA, and HI)</li>
<li>reading (kind of generic, but I do enjoy it. How can I make this interesting?)</li>
<li>making videos (made a short film for my history teacher last year with a friend. Will make another longer one for senior project)</li>
</ul>
<p>these are on top of my school related EC’s (journalism. Mock trial, track and field, girl scouts, and Sierra club). </p>
<p>How many should I include?</p>
<p>^^^
I’ve also taught my self various instruments (pianoon elementary school, guitar and ukulele in high school) though I just play for fun. </p>
<p>Where do you include such things kn the application?</p>
<p>I collect oldddddd video games and I enjoy lifting weights.</p>
<p>My son had better admissions results than one might have predicted from his grades. I think his essay about teaching himself to fold origami - which moved from a mere hobby on to teaching origami to seniors and selling origami earrings. </p>
<p>My older son listed having done the programming for one of the most popular mods for Civ 4.</p>
<p>Yay for NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy (if anyone else here has done that). I’m glad these count. :)</p>
<p>Student Honor Board…investigate cheating cases…</p>
<p>Some of these activities aren’t hidden at all–they’re school clubs or activities.</p>
<p>Blogging and forums is the same as breathing nowadays. :D</p>
<p>Me and my friends like to explore our city. We’ve been on some really awesome adventures to ghostowns, nearly getting run over in train tunnels, sewage pipes and other really awesome stuff, nearly getting ourselves killed each time. It makes for good stories, but most of the time its illegal so it cant really go on my app.</p>
<p>I’m super interested in public transit, and ride transit wherever I go. I just counted and found that I have ridden on services provided by 53 transit agencies across the country and around the world. I live in Seattle and have ridden probably well over a hundred bus routes in the Seattle area, and always ride as much transit as possible when I go out of town. For instance, I rode about 85% of the total track of the Chicago L when I was in Chicago, and I rode on 18 different lines of the New York Subway while I was there. Should I talk about this in my activities?</p>
<p>A lot of these sound like they could be neat in your essay to create a more interesting picture of the student, but it would have to be incorporated well (obv)</p>
<p>I strongly doubt that there are “hidden” extracurriculars that matter to selective colleges.</p>
<p>It’s amusing reading the posts on this topic, and I hope that those looking for ideas of how to strengthen their college applications play it safe and focus on real extracurriculars. And what are those real extracurriculars? I’m sure everyone knows.</p>
<p>love how people are just listing activities now and no one is actually responding to them :0</p>
<p>^^Yeah, when I posted my activities on here I didn’t mean that I was going to put any on my application and I didn’t really expect anyone to care, it’s just one of those ‘reply-to-topic-question’ threads.</p>
<p>^Agreed, but that being said, I have time to kill right now so (and note that I’m only a high school senior):
I’d mention anything band-related if you’re going to major in music or play a ‘hook’ instrument (otherwise, only mention major things), and cross country if you’ve been in it for a long time. Computer skills are irrelevant (everyone has computer skills nowadays) unless it’s advanced photoshop or programming knowledge, and even then you’d have to work it into your application in an applied manner (win some contest, do intern work for a relative’s company, design a website for a school club, etc.).</p>
<p>For eacole - depending on how the app lets you talk about it (as in, is it going to ask for hours per week or # of years done?), you could or could not put certain activities, but I’d stay on the safe side for all of those, even in the cases where your work did or will get published. However, some of the stuff you listed would make excellent essay topics.</p>
<p>Don’t mention reading on your app at all because most people going to top colleges are probably voracious readers anyway (maybe on your essay if a book you read changed your life or something, but that’s still a risky topic); exception’s if you read a <em>lot</em> (as in, highly erudite and intellectual material undergraduate scholars would debate about and write term papers on) and/or used what you read to conduct research. I think part of Columbia’s app lets you list books you’ve read in the last few months.</p>
<p>I don’t know about NaNoWriMo; a couple of people here have put it and I’m not sure if it’s app-worthy. It certainly shows dedication and a minimum of several dozen hours of work, but 50,000 words written in one month isn’t indicative at all of quality of writing. I’ve also never heard of anyone submitting his/her NNWM novel as an arts supplement so I don’t know if that’d be too long.</p>