I’ve posted a few chance me’s on here if you want more context, but in summary I’m aiming for some pretty competitive schools (Tufts, Pomona, Rice, WashU, Brown, CMU, and Notre Dame) (which are my reaches lol don’t worry I have solid safeties/matches as well).
So I was wondering how competitive my EC’s are and what I could do to improve them. For reference, I want to major in CS.
Here is the list:
Destination Imagination (many years)
Team Co-captain
Qualified for States 3 times
Competed at Global Finals twice
Created a DI team for students with special needs to compete on
Created a social media account to share DI memes
Community Service (3 years)
200+ hours working with kids with special needs/bringing them on local field trips
20+ hours training an artificial intelligence robot to recognize deforestation patterns via SAS AI
Coding (2 years)
Extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
created several personal websites from scratch
helped fix up the website for my dad’s apartments
Part-time job (1 yr)
15-20 hours/week
helped build the store last summer
usually in charge of the register/other general retail tasks
Best Pals (3 years)
selected for the leadership board, was one of 4 people out of 70 in the club to help plan and lead meetings
Cross Country (JV) (4 years)
active member, not very good at it but I really had fun with it
I run our instagram account lol
Summer Programs
Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Camp (2020)
Notre Dame Summer Scholars Research Computing Track (2021)
Student-Athlete Leadership Council (3 years)
led discussions about making good choices for middle schoolers
Debate (2 years)
qualified for State in 2020
Photography (3 years)
Self-taught in digital photography and Adobe photoshop, but no significant accomplishments or anything
I know EC’s are only a piece of the admissions process, but I would love some feedback on mine!
However, to me your ECs look very good. If anything I think that the list is long. I think from here on you should continue to do what you want to do. Focus on what you feel is important. Also, where you have leadership position remember that leadership is about helping other people, and helping to make the activity better for everyone who participates in it.
I have long advocated for doing what you want to do, doing it very well, and when in a leadership position make the activity better for everyone. This has at least worked for us so far. I am hoping and expecting that it will work for you also.
Its hard to evaluate your ECs without understanding the rest of your application: your GPA, class rank, test scores, race, ethnicity, high school, socioeconomic status, intended major, etc.
If you can provide more details, it will be easier for us to give you feedback. The ECs are only the icing on the cake, so they play a role only after the main part of your application is reviewed.
In general ECs should be used to portray a picture of yourself that otherwise wouldn’t be apparent from other parts of your application (essay, reccs, etc). They should complement and reinforce the reader, and help paint a picture of who you are.
The biggest problem that most students make is that they feel like they need to use up all 10 slots on the Common App page for ECs. You have a lot of great things to choose from. But do you really need to list all of them? At most the reader will glance at these and then skip to your essay and grades.
You want the reader to come away from your application with a solid memory of you. “She’s the coding girl from Wisconsin who did XXXX, YYY and ZZZZ”. Its your job to paint the mental picture of what XXXX, YYY and ZZZ are. The problem is that the institutional needs of each college differs. So while Notre Dame is looking for XYZ, Tufts may be looking for E G and F.
My biggest suggestion for you is to sit down and figure out how you want to package yourself. The list of ECs above is way too large for people to digest quickly. Re-arrange things into a cohesive groups (for example combine all of the coding things into one group). Try to pare down to no more than 6-7 key groups.
Thanks for the advice!! That makes a lot of sense and I will definitely try to trim down the less characteristic EC’s (probably debate and student-athlete leadership)