How deep is "deep" for extracurriculars?

Applying to College
1

<p>So, I'm in 11 clubs in my school and I really love a few of them. But since I'm stretched over such a wide span (and I honestly don't regret it much since they were all pretty enjoyable), sometimes I feel that I don't have enough depth. What do you think?</p>

<p>Listing my clubs
Not really important ones: (you can skip this)
1.) National Spanish Honor Society: I had the grades, yay auto accept. Meetings are only once every month/two months so that's a plus. We don't really do anything...seriously. (2 years)
2.) National Honor Society: I applied because hey why not? I could put my extra service hours to some use (since we have to do a certain number of hours every year). Also no real meetings the whole year (2 years)
3.) National Science Honor Society: Once again I applied because why not. I also applied because I wanted to get opportunities to do science-related things. Hasn't worked out too well for me yet but since it's the club's first year, I'm giving it a chance. Meetings also are infrequent but we're informed about a lot of out of school stuff (1 year)
4.) National Art Honor Society: I applied since I wanted to get an opportunity to do art since I know I won't have room in my schedule for art after I took it freshman year. It's been pretty fun actually but not something I'm super into. Sparse meetings (1 per month) is another positive (3 years)
5.) Medical Society: I wanted to get a sense of the med field, something my mom's been pushing me into. We go to a local hospital and mess with the simulation labs. I'm actually an officer but officers don't really do anything because the club is so disorganized. The club only lasts for 5 weeks and...it wasn't as fulfilling as I expected but still a somewhat interesting learning experience. (1 year)
6.) Piano Club: I co-founded this with my friend, mostly because she was kinda nervous to do it alone. I really don't do much and can barely come to meetings so I feel like a horrible VP. I handle secretarial stuff kinda to make up slightly for it (2 years)</p>

<p>More important ones:
1) National Math Honor Society: Currently I'm secretary of the club and a manager of the pre-calculus team. I've been in this club since Freshman year and it has totally made me fall in love with math more. Basically the club doubles as a tutoring service and a math team. I tutor at every free time I get because math is really the only thing I've had success in tutoring and I get to meet a lot of my underclassmen which is really cool. It makes me really happy that I can pass something on because I'm not the absolute brightest math student (people in my school are crazy smart). I think my major thing I've done for the club is that in junior year, the pre-calc team kinda collapsed without a sponsor/manager so I hunted down a teacher/classroom and managed the team even though I was only beginning to study pre-calc that year. I didn't want to drop math competition that year because competitions were fun and drew me into math- underclassmen in pre-calc shouldn't be denied that chance. Our sponsor wasn't very helpful so we bounced around between like 3 teachers and did some self learning. There were 3 new underclassmen who joined the club and liked it so perhaps I was doing something right. This year the team still is lacking a permanent sponsor and the situation is even worse since we've lost a few teachers and we aren't allowed to meet on wednesdays anymore but the pre-calc team currently has about 12 members and I can teach them now that I'm in Calc AB. Besides that, I'm also trying to start a box top program for my school to help raise funds for the club since we're running dangerously low and it would suck for members to have to pay 10-20 dollars per competition. I've also placed in several regional competitions (usually 3rd place in team or something fairly low like 13th individuals but we also have the national winners in our area which makes it harder to place in individuals) , we don't have enough money to go to state/nationals (4 years)</p>

<p>2) Anime Society: I'm vice president of this club and I've been in it since freshman year. Basically, we just watch anime the whole club. I do admit I skip out on this club once in a while, it's mostly like a relaxing club for me and all the members there are pretty close. We go to a convention yearly. But besides that, we don't do much. Which is why slowly I've been introducing games/activities to the clubs such as trivia for pocky, a weird form of pictionary, and a session on how to make ears or tails for a costume (even though I'm not a pro at it I have learned a few things from making some costumes of my own like this:
Umbreon</a> Cosplay 1 by ~LunarFireFox on deviantART ). I really love anime/manga and so this club is a nice community to foster that love. (4 years)</p>

<p>3) Recycling Club: I am the public relations officer and for 2 years I've gotten this office on an absolute fluke (junior year: I walked in on election days and no one else was there who wanted a position; senior year: I was one of the few dedicated people from last year and even though I haven't been to a meeting yet, my friends were in charge and didn't know anyone better so they just gave me the position again). Um. I haven't done much except help on every day that I don't have anime/some other club because they coincide on the same day. Usually we have a TON of members in the beginning of the year so I help out in a few meetings to show them the ropes, then kinda disappear while my schedule fluctuates, then reappear more near the mid/end of the year when we really need help since everyone quits after finishing their needed hours. The only major leadership thing I did was that after we got new recycling bins, I went and contacted the art honor society if they wanted to help paint the bins. I painted one myself, no pictures though. To me, recycling is definitely a necessary thing so I'm glad my school is doing it and that I can help out (2 years...and on and off freshman year because the sponsor was my science teacher and she made us do it in class...)</p>

<p>4) IB Magazine: I'm surprisingly co-editor in chief...also by complete *** fluke. I applied for art editor and got a top position instead lol. Basically a separate student-run magazine written by and for IB students. It's generally very humorous and satirical, sometimes serious. I started junior year because I was unsatisfied with the covers which were usually crude and not fun at all. I asked my best friend (she was an art editor at the time) if she wanted to draw with me and she agreed so thus started our campaign to improve the quality of art in the magazine. I don't like drawing alone because I tend to lose interest but drawing with my friend is the best. We bounce ideas, then she sketches, then I make revisions and ink. A lot of people really liked the new covers so that made us happy. I also moved on to sometimes doing my own art entries if a specific theme for an issue inspires me or I illustrate other people's essays, sometimes alone and sometimes with my friend. As an editor...I just draw a lot more over the whole issue, do some proof reading. It's not much of a big deal, the other co-editor in chief does the rearranging and selection of articles. (2 years)</p>

<p>5)World Quest: This is a fairly new thing I just joined. It's a trivia competition for world history/current affairs. I formed a team with a freshman from math club, a junior I randomly met on the bus, and a senior friend. Global awareness was something that I didn't really care for for years...until....I don't know. I gradually realized "hey, I really want to know what's going around the world." So basically I've been studying for this competition and its been major fun, especially since my team mates are pretty legit and we randomly quiz each other. I've learned a lot too such as what's happening in Africa and China and transnational crime and pop culture and just...a lot of things. I dunno if we'll make it past the school wide competition or regional competition yet (schoolwide is on tuesday), but we'll definitely try (1 year)</p>

<p>So um, yeah. -repeats- Do you think I have enough "depth"? I'm just not really sure anymore when I see people do only 3-ish clubs and then score first place on some competition or something or raise thousands of dollars. Also, I really didn't do many clubs freshman year because...a lot of these clubs didn't exist until recently and the honor societies limit membership to sophomores/juniors usually. IB mag I didn't even know you could submit if you weren't a junior (now I make a point to make it SUPER obvious...with a comic/illustration on how to do it haha)</p>

<p>And additionally, I'm not quite sure what to write about for the 150 word common app essay. I'm thinking either math club or IB mag or world quest.</p>

2

<p>I don’t see an edit button, so I guess I’ll just tack this on.
I also co-host a month-long-ish game in our school called Verbal Assassins where people sign up on facebook to join within a certain period and when we call the due date, we send out to each person a “target” and a “kill word” and that person has to get the “target” to say the “kill word” to “kill” the target. Then the person gets the target’s target and keeps killing until he/she is the last one standing. Targets are re-scrambled every weekend and kills are only permitted on school grounds. We already have about 55+ people playing in our school and we’re on our 3rd round. It’s kinda an informal stress relief thing for students with small prizes at the end. Does this count as an activity?</p>

3

<p>I’ll admit: I didn’t read most of your text. Why? You’re too wordy. Doesn’t interest me. I think you should severely edit and become more concise. Just because you CAN give a five minute speech on eaach of your eleven activities doesn’t mean you should. You get a very small window of time to make an impression. A bucket load of info isn’t what you should pour into someone’s lap.</p>

<p>The amount of detail you’ve included just weakens the overall picture. Seriously. At this point, your resume would be five pages long.</p>

4

<p>I don’t get any sense of you or your interests/talents from this list (though I’ll admit that I, like T26E4, didn’t read the entire thing). Most of your activities seem to be fillers–there’s a lot of “Hey, why not apply?” going on. What is it that actually drives you? What would you considering majoring in? I get none of that from your activites; you’re a Spanish-speaking artsy pre-med piano-playing anime-watching recyling math geek (who also writes).</p>

<p>And it seems like you’ve made more excuses than impacts. Your math team doesn’t have the money to compete–why not orchestrate a fundraiser? You sorta kinda help out with Recycling Club–why not quit that and focus your energies on a club that means more to you?</p>

5

<p>I agree with the previous posters; you need to be able to give a succinct explanation of what you’ve done in a paragraph or two, not a rambling story. In the startup world people actually practice their “elevator speech”; the idea is that you find yourself on the elevator with a potential financial backer or big client, and you have just seconds to get the big points across.</p>

<p>Since few people are going to have the interest or time to read thru your voluminous post, let me give you a link so you can judge your ECs for yourself. There is a thread with comments by NSM, a Ivy alum interviewer, about what constitutes impressive ECs. The post is at <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-what-s-good.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-what-s-good.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>The National Math Honor Society is the one club activity that definitely has substance. The second, if you decide to take on more leadership and commitment, is the co-editor of the IB magazine. Whether or not you decide to continue or drop the others I don’t think that you need to mention them on your application. Doing that would likely compromise the one or two activities in which you have a compelling presence.</p>

7

<p>What do I think?</p>

<p>Like a bunch of kids, you seem to think that the world is supposed to present everyone with equal opportunities for ECs and then colleges gaze kindly at the HS landscape and see who makes the “right” choices – eg. first to participate, and then to spend the hours it takes trodding down the path others have already set out. And anywhere this picture doesn’t fit (no funding, club didn’t exist, no teacher has volunteered to sponsor your club, etc) then a little note to let the adcoms know you where your school/community cheated you is enough to make it up.</p>

<p>You just don’t get it. </p>

<p>If you’re thinking of admission to top schools, go to some of their websites and see what they say they’re looking for. They look for those who have the initiative to think of how things can be better and the drive to get it done. Which makes your excuses all the more grating since they just serve to underscore your passive approach, exactly the opposite of what a top school wants. Here’s a blurb from the Stanford FAQ to illustrate the point

And what have you done? Impact? Exceptional experience? All I see is “joined this, joined that” plus excuses.</p>