<p>So, after taking a healthy look through the "College Chances" forum, I feel like there's a ton of people that are involved in or officers of like 5 different clubs. Immediately, in my mind, I think to myself, "holy crap."</p>
<p>What are clubs like in these schools? What are clubs like in your school? Is literally everybody involved in clubs, and how difficult is it to attain leadership positions in them, since it seems like some people specialize in becoming president of every single club at their school? Are people forced to join clubs?</p>
<p>The reason why I wonder is because, at my school, there are literally only 5 different clubs (one of which I founded last year), all of which have very little participation. The largest of those clubs is about 20 people, and that is incredibly small. For context, I go to a public school with over 1700 students. </p>
<p>Thus, it leaves me partially astounded when I see chance threads with people who are officers of 3 or more clubs. Is my school just weird when it comes to a lack of club participation?</p>
<p>My school is about the same size but we have a lot of clubs! And club participation is very high. At our school most competitions for officers are competitive so there isn’t one person running all the clubs.</p>
<p>Too many clubs/activities is my school’s problem–well if you’re talking about academic competitions, people aren’t focused on a single one.</p>
<p>Yet officer positions are also highly competitive, unlike other schools you have 6 people running for VP in the Key Club (the KC had almost 250 paid members last year and likely more as recruiting was more widespread this year). Other schools in the area, you’ll be the only one running.</p>
<p>Just a little view of my school, I’m one of those students who is almost done with school and rather focus on clubs/extracurriculars because there is so much to do in them.</p>
<p>Where I’m from everybody is extremely involved in like at least 3 proper activities each and there’s also a ton of clubs that are all super active, organize tons of events, are involved with community and win national competitions. Running for an Officer position is also very competitive, you can have 10+ running for posts like Secretary in an ordinary club. Thing is, the school says that you can be President or VP or only one club, so basically by Senior year half the school is President of at least one thing. Mass participation plus Officership in very few clubs (rarely more than 1) makes it easier to accomplish things because people are concentrated and put effort into things, but then it’s harder to stand out during college apps.</p>
<p>My school has like 6 clubs with little involvement, which is a shame because since we’re American students abroad, the people who do not speak Greek can’t really go elsewhere for extracurricular activities. There are a lot of options for sports, of course.</p>
<p>I would say that most people at my school (~800 kids) are involved in clubs. You tend to find less athletes and musically-inclined folks in clubs, which is a bummer but understandable due to the time commitment (as a matter of fact, the music kids have their own clubs, so they’re happy).</p>
<p>We have a lot of clubs and little leadership, which I think is the biggest problem. I’ve been in a couple of clubs myself, and until this year when I joined my school’s UNICEF club, there was no hierarchy. It is generally accepted that the person(s) who founded the club is in charge, and when they graduate, they pass the club on to a trustworthy underclassmen…which is how almost all of our clubs end up dying.</p>
<p>More and more clubs keep popping up, most of them are dumb things but the ones that stay are the ones like Best Buddies, Red Cross, UNICEF, and foreign language clubs. Even though many of them survive 2-3 years, the fact that there are so many of them means that people have to split their time. My friend is a sophomore, and during club meetings (our bi or sometimes once-weekly free periods) she has 3 or 4 different clubs she’s a part of that she’s expected to attend. No one person can truly be a part of that many clubs 100%, so people either choose one and stick to it, or participate half-heartedly, and that’s where the true problem lies. One of the main reasons why I joined UNICEF was because my best friend is in it, but the issues with our hierarchy (the two girls who founded it, one of the girl’s boyfriends, and another best friend are all the officers, and have been for almost 3 years) and the fact that most people don’t even show up or do anything has made her not want to do anything either.</p>
<p>I stand by the philosophy that those people who are officers of 3 different clubs are half-assing it, even though they don’t realize it or deny it.</p>