<p>Will the school verify my extracurriculars or I should get certifications on my own? Thanks:D</p>
<p>Your extracurriculars will not be verified unless something looks fishy (for example, you claim that you were involved with 7 different orchestras in your senior year, plus class president, plus a tutor for 20 hours a week, plus you had your own startup company…)</p>
<p>There is a small thing called trust, and CMU both trusts you and expects your honesty in return. :)</p>
<p>Extracurriculars: </p>
<p>president of math club in freshman</p>
<p>president of programming club in sophomore</p>
<p>assistance of science club and held some interschool science fair in sophomore</p>
<p>state qualified violin (senior)</p>
<p>1st and soloist in orchestra (senior)</p>
<p>all state orchestra (senior)</p>
<p>violin champion in hsinchu and taoyuan city (I was in Taiwan when I was Freshman and Sophomore)</p>
<p>swimming team of Presbyterian Bible College: Silver Medal 100m backstroke in school (Freshman and Sophomore)</p>
<p>TTSA high school union summer study-IT, select 2 students from each of the 13 best schools in nation (Sophomore)</p>
<p>church volunteering every week (Junior, Senior)</p>
<p>will these be strange? I swear they’re all truth… but I’m just really curious about how they’d check my activities in Taiwan if they want to verify</p>
<p>Doesn’t really look like anything unusual for most applicants that get heavily involved in ECs.</p>
<p>Ok thanks 
Then no problem :D</p>
<p>On the common ap you really should only list 7 ecs and stop at that.</p>
<p>Some of these could instead be listed in the Honors and Awards section.</p>
<p>Adcoms in general are fishy on foreign ECs - like you said, not much to verify. That said, ECs are worth very little in the big scheme of thing.</p>
<p>What we learn from the list is that you enjoy and compete in music and swimming, volunteer in your church.
President of Math and computer club really means little - it’s just a title with little designation for one’s skills/talents in either area. It says to the Adcom you volunteered to take on some organizational stuff. Not to underplay but it’s a yawn as far as your overall application and relevance and importance of GPA and courses.
ECs are overrated in general for college admissions- Adcoms don’t verify and just look for involvement in a variety of issues. They become important when national and state rankings come into play for sports, music or math/science competitions. Everything else, just filler - it’s worse when someone doesn’t have any. But having 2,3 or 7 – kinda irrelvant. No offense about you-- just saying this is how it’s looked at overall everywhere.
Hope that clears it up.</p>
<p>When you write your essays however, stick to one or two that were particularly meaningful to you in which you excelled, learned something or plan to continue…yadaa yadaa</p>
<p>^ Thank you a lot. I really learn from it :)</p>