Hello everyone,
I was wondering if you guys could share your point of view on if my ECs are decent or not.
So far, I am not that far from applying and this is what I have:
- I am president of a small chess club (4-5 people) at my school. I also have an aboveaverage FIDE rating and participate in tournaments.
2)While not clubs, I sometimes act as a sort of teachers assistant at my school. I am at the top of my very small IB class and have these study sessions with other students and try to help them out in Physics, Math, Chem, Bio, Lit, and Economics.
3)I have a few science projects. I have made a decent coilgun, helicopter, and hovercraft.
4)Some of my teachers see me as pretty talented and have agreed to write me letters of recommendation (Math, Physisc, Chem, and Literature).
- while I dont have any unpaid internships, I have taken the occasional lab tour (5 days NASA type place in my country of Iran) and attended the occasional conference(neuroscience).
6)I speak and write fluently in both Farsi and English and am semi fluent in French
That is about it. Can it help my in UCLA, UBC or U of T.
I think the teacher’s assistant thing falls more under the volunteering category. The science projects sound very cool, maybe you can elaborate on those in an essay maybe?
is your school relatively small? At my school you need at least 10 people that are interested to create a club so your chess club with 4-5 people sounds very different from the clubs at my school. But that is totally an EC and instead of saying anything about the lack of members, talk about your high ratings/achievements.
Can you explain the lab tour thing a little better? When I think of a “tour” I think of a person working there showing you around their workplace. It just sounds like you attended a tour around the building.
The languages are not really an EC I would say. Unless you have a hobby of learning new languages and French is one you recently started to study?
The UC Application splits up activities into 5 different sections so you can choose how and where you want to list the activities you are involved in. Colleges like to see long term commitment as well, so if you’ve been in chess club for 3-4 years, I believe it will definitely strengthen your application.