<p>reading posts on here freaks me out because other kids have a ton of ECs. don't get me wrong, i play softball for 2 teams and volleyball for one, altar serve twice a month and have been for the past 5 years, and recently assissted a number of times in helping kids with special needs play sports. i have also volunteered at a few one-time service projects. how do you people have time for all of this? do my ECs sound terrible, decent, or good? i know it needs work and i will probably join 2 clubs (comm. service and republican club) and i'm already in NHS. still, i feel like my app. is not impressive at all compared to others. how much do colleges care about ECs? do they demand thousands of hours or just like to see you doing something other than sitting on the couch watching tv?</p>
<p>Your EC’s are very good if you take your sports seriously. All of these other CCs play this think called “THE COLLEGE GAME” which is where you do as many things possible but put the minimal amount of effort into each one. I believe this system is complete bullcrap. If you haven’t noticed none of these bookworms do any sports and they do not realize that sports take up a ton of time and effort and you are left physically and mentally tired during the night which hinders your ability to do other things. Sports teach you dicipline and hard work and quite frankley these kids with these jacked up EC lists have gotten so used to bs there way through life so it looks good on an application that they have forgotten or never learned what true hard work is. </p>
<p>Bottom line, you are fine and your mile deep inch wide approach will serve you a lot better in life than the usual mile wide inch deep approach that many high schoolers take.</p>
<p>Ex: Someone at our school on their junior marshal application said they had 12 leadership positions. My philosophy- if your a “leader” in 12 clubs/teams then you are obviously a leader in nothing because no one can have the time to be a good leader in that many things.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you, I’m in your same situation: All I do is Cross Country, Indoor and Outdoor Track and am cross country captain.</p>
<p>I take my leadership position seriously and we are ranked #1 in the state coming into this year and I am an all-state runner, but to obtain this I could not do many other extracurriculars.</p>
<p>The whole system ticks me off so much so I’m going to stop ranting</p>
<p>it depends what college you are looking at. At the very upper tier colleges, most of the applicants are academically qualified, so the factors ends up distinguishing the applicants are their ECs, essays and recs, and out of those three ECs may be the most significant in distinguishing the kind of people the admissions officers are looking for.</p>