So i am currently a junior in high school with an 89 GPA (my school doesn’t do 4.0 scale sorry) and I am pretty stressed out about extracurriculars. I feel like I don’t have enough free time anymore. So I have a job that I do Saturdays and Sundays (5-13 hours a week), I am in theater every day after school(10-15 hours a week), I am an editor for the yearbook and have meetings for it 3- times a week (5-9 hours a week), I’m in a leadership program for community service(3 hours a week) and a couple other small clubs. I really like yearbook and don’t want to quit it as well as theater so I was wondering will it hurt my resume if I quit my job, I feel like I need to cut an extracurricular and that is the only one I don’t really love doing. Thank you!
That is fine. Don’t live your life for your application, anyway. Do what you like to do. Change your mind sometimes, which is what high school kids do! Spend more time in the activities that matter most to you. Then your application will be a genuine reflection of you.
^^
Plus, there’s no such thing as the perfect number of ECs. Do what you love, and colleges will see it. If you force yourself to go through with ECs you don’t like, at the end of high school you’ll be left wondering if it was worth it.
Have fun!
A ton of ECs won’t make up for average grades and test scores, unless you win a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize.
ECs aren’t about quantity but impact. Choose a couple activities and stick to them, trying to be the best possible you can in these.
Keep in mind your job may help you pay for college though, so it may be better to drop the small clubs and cut the community service first, see how it goes, then only cut the job.
Job+ theater+ yearbook would be PLENTY for all colleges.
Enjoy what you do! That’s what colleges want to see. All I did was leadership and tennis. Although I was a recruited athlete for tennis.
Regarding ECs, you are fine. You have shown a strong commitment to theater and the yearbook which is great. To the extent that I can figure out what any university is looking for (which is limited), being able to show commitment to something that you care about is the main thing. You clearly have done this.
Finally, your GPA is probably not enough for the very top 10 or 20 schools, and you don’t need to go to any of the top 20 schools anyway. There are thousands of universities and colleges in the US, and hundreds of very good ones. It sounds like you are very much on track for many of the top 100 or top 200 schools in the US (assuming that you can figure out finances), which are all very good. You probably would get into most of the “top 200” schools even if you didn’t have any ECs.
Do what you want to do, take your academics seriously, then you will be able to find a university that values you for what you have done.
No it won’t hurt and that is the one I would cut (if you can afford it) anyway. You will have ample opportunities to work ithe future so take advantage of theater and yearbook.