<p>I'm entering 9th grade next year and I'm planning on founding several clubs - Mu Alpha Theta,
Tri-M Music Honor Society, Science Bowl, Environmental club - just to name some.</p>
<p>How good would these look on a application, MIT in particular</p>
<p>Also, what about independent studies and college courses? I'm planning to finish the math at my high school by end of 10th grade. Should I take college math or take independent studies?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Transcript padding</p>
<p>Ditto, that’s way too many clubs to found and still be legitimate, fully-functional clubs that you yourself are a hard-working leader for. Pick one and focus on it, at most two, especially if you’re just starting them.</p>
<p>That’s obvious resume padding. Don’t.</p>
<p>Your post looked good till here:</p>
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<p>That line killed it.</p>
<p>even you got in that way, I bet you can’t survive inside</p>
<p>founding several clubs…finding…</p>
<p>well, i guess its alright but yes, its application padding and they will see that and you will get rejected. dude, your a freshman, calm down…
MIT knows that there are freshman out there who start worrying early and do a lot of stuff for transcript padding and they get rejected right away! You have to concentrate on one or two things and be passionate. Once again, your a freshman. Calm down!</p>
<p>So how would they sort out the transcript padding from those that are genuinely passionate about and devoted to all the clubs and societies they join?</p>
<p>Hmm… I guess your right. Maybe I got a little too overboard. </p>
<p>Maybe I should concentrate on one or two… Thanks! =D</p>
<p>JezChan, they know. Their admissions officers know. They look through that many apps.</p>
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<p>I think they can tell simply from the fact that you joined a dozen clubs, of which some may not reflect your interests whatsoever. If you’re not being genuine about yourself, it may come out in your essays and interview, if it’s evident enough after reading thousands of other applications, most of which will appear more intrinsically genuine.</p>
<p>Not to be entirely cynical, but a club is a group that people join for three main reasons: to meet people with common interests, share ideas, or engage in a group activity, r</p>
<p>so…if someone were to found just one club, out of genuine interest, they would most likely be looked upon poorly anyways?</p>
<p>that sucks.</p>
<p>^^ Nope. I know a current MIT senior who founded a science club at his high school and was admitted. Of course, he also had an incredibly strong academic record. He put a lot of effort into the club and it still exists at the school. </p>
<p>I know a junior at Wellesley who founded a culinary club at the same school when she was a sophomore. As you can imagine, it became a very popular club (there was a kitchen at the school they could use) and in the club’s second year, the students began a community-service tradition of catering a big fundraising event at a local museum. That event continues, as far as I know. Again, she had an incredibly strong academic record as well.</p>
<p>In both cases, there were many teachers and others who could write strongly about the leadership involved in these activities, because these two clubs became well known and successful. I believe the culinary club involved something like 6 hours per week, and the science club, if you include all the preparation required to mentor students in planning, conducting, and submitting projects to the county science fair, Siemens, etc., probably took at least that amount of time.</p>
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<p>That’s not exactly what I said. I’m saying that people will generally know when you do something purely to look good, if they care enough to look in the first place.</p>
<p>If it is out of genuine interest, more or less, I gather that it couldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>Generally even if one can craft the essays pretty well, an energetic and shrewd interviewer can certainly figure out if one is not actually into what one does. </p>
<p>While interviews aren’t great for everyone, they certainly help a lot in keeping things honest.</p>
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<p>You don’t have to be all that energetic and shrewd. Actually founding clubs, in my personal view, is a positive thing, and it shows many characteristics that MIT looks for. It shows a willingness to change the environment for the better when you are frustrated by what is there (or not there), but as has been discussed widely already, motivation is everything.</p>
<p>Suppose you are passionate about Astronomy. You’ve had a telescope since you were 5, you have evidence to back up your significant passion that you have had for years. You get to school and there is no club to support this. So after spending some time trying to work within the system, joining the physics club or what have you, you decide to form one. You get a group of students who are interested in Astronomy, you find a faculty advisor and you run the club successfully for a couple of years. You build a useful club program, with visits to local observatories or some such thing, and then your senior year, you hand off to a new club president who does a fine job running it in your absence. I think that this is an extremely positive thing particularly as there are so many places where it can go so spectacularly wrong. </p>
<p>You can fail to get sufficient student (or faculty) interest (“the 18th Century Rural English Zoning Regulations Study Group sadly did not work out”), you can fail to build a compelling club program. You can fail to provide evidence of how the club survives and prospers without your energy driving it, and of course all of the time that you spend wrangling the astronomy club is time that you are not spending doing astronomy, so you really have to know what it is that made you want to found the club.</p>
<p>I agree that it is unlikely that someone has more than one burning passion that they need to found more than one activity, but if done well, it can be a real asset to an application, and if done poorly, it makes you look spectacularly insincere, which is an application killer.</p>