<p>With a job and so much homework, I quit two sports and a volunteer club I did last year to focus on getting on good grades and my assignments. I'm kind of concerned though that I don't have any extracurriculars to put on my application...Is this a big deal?</p>
<p>Can you be accepted into a top university without many extracurriculars but a high gpa and act/sat?</p>
<p>Which extracurriculars do colleges really care about? </p>
<p>A job is an EC. Showing a consistent job ethic is very good. ECs are also only considered at the highly competitive schools. 90% of colleges don’t care.</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of things, your GPA, SAT or ACT scores, and class load are much more important than your EC’s. Yes, you can be accepted into top schools without stellar EC’s. I don’t think colleges care what activities you participate in, but they definitely care about how much you have devoted your time and passion to them.</p>
<p>Although this is about community service, I think the discussion might give you some insight @sayonaraa</p>
<p><a href=“Will very little community service hurt college admissions? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>Will very little community service hurt college admissions? - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums;
<p>If you have been struggling with grades at school, it is wise to cut down EC. Strong EC is pretty important for top schools like Ivies, however, they also require excellent grades and scores. Without strong EC but good grades and scores, you may still get into many of the top 50 schools. My D has rather week EC and no sport, she is still admitted to 3 of 4 top 10 engineering schools she applied.</p>
<p>If you’re looking at any top 50 school, ECs are extremely important. Once you make the mark for grades and scores, they’ll admit or reject you based off of your ECs and essays. So as long as you are at least at the bottom of the middle 50, your scores and grades will be fine and they’ll move onto ECs and essays.</p>
<p>And a job counts! So keep it up.</p>
<p>Top 50 is a wide range. Many of the top 50 schools care less for EC in admission. However, EC would be critical for merit scholarships as all candidates have excellent stats. Having scores/GPA in the lower mid 50 would really need help from essays and EC. If you have scores and GPA above admission average, EC would have less impact on your admission except for the very top schools.</p>
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I seriously doubt that is true. Please post links to the Common Data Set filings for a few of these top 50 schools where they say ECs are anything less than Important.</p>
<p>My D has no sport, no leadership role, and just joined one club at school from sophomore to senior. They only think she got is music program at school. She got accepted by multiple top 20-50 schools. I am not saying EC are not a consideration for those schools. I am saying they care less than those real top schools. That is in response to the “extremely important” at “any top 50 schools” claim above.
CDS only list what are their consideration, it does not say what is weight in each. There is no stat on EC anyway.</p>
<p>I agree with Billsho on this. I say that out of top 30, EC becomes less important. Academics by far are the most important factors in college admissions.</p>
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Sorry @billcsho. This is just not true. The CDS list the amount of weight each element gets in admission. I do believe you are right that ECs are not highly weighted for all top 50. For instance, UVA <a href=“http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/cds/cds1314all.shtm”>http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/cds/cds1314all.shtm</a> weights ECs as important while many other things are very important (ethnic status, first gen).</p>