How do extracurriculars work?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>For example, I see people post things like:
"Art Club, Poetry Jam Club, traveled to Nigeria, worked at my uncle's sock factory", etc. in the subjective portion of their "stats" threads.</p>

<p>Which makes me wonder:
How does one go about verifying such activities?
How significantly can you overstate the significance such activities?
Say a family member of close friend offers you an "internship" - or a "sit around and watch what we do for several weeks" Is this a valid extracurricular? Are you for all intents and college purposes a valid intern?
And lastly, how do such activities get formatted on a typical college app?
Is it wise to study the Common App and fill in any gaps one may have - for the sake of making that look good?</p>

2

<ol>
<li>usually through recs, either from the leader of the activity (such as a lab professor) or from your college counselor (give him/her a resume prior to his/her rec)</li>
<li>As much as you want, but adcoms can spot BS quite easily. </li>
<li>As far as the adcoms know, yes you are an intern and it is an extracurricular. For the most part they don’t expect you to do much more than watch and observe.</li>
<li>There is a space on the Common App where you order your extracurriculars in their order of importance to you. You should probably look over the common app.</li>
</ol>

<p>Good Luck.</p>