Hi, I’m posting this thread because my friend is telling me that my high school life is too loaded with rigorous classes and no leadership or extracurriculars. I am curious what your guys’ opinions are!
I’ll give a brief overview of my schedule and my activities so you can decide for yourself.
Career major: Computer Science
9th:
AP Human Geography
Honors literature 9
10th:
AP World History
AP Statistics
AP Chemistry
Honors literature 10
11th:
AP Calculus AB
AP Language
AP United States History
AP Computer Science Principles
AP Computer Science A
AP Psychology???
Honors Physics (No AP class but I heard it’s around AP difficulty)
12:
AP Calc BC
AP Literature
AP Government
AP Biology
AP Environmental Science
Extracurriculars:
Tennis Team Captain (1 year)
Varsity tennis (3 years)
Local tennis tournaments
NHS (3 years)
Camp Casey (4 years)
Internship at STEAM towards the future in ISD
Internship at tech company
Do you guys think that I need to be “more involved in my community” and take more leadership roles? I don’t have nearly as many as my friends, who are like vice-president of the HOSA club and secretary of the DECA class. Will volunteering at local places and taking leadership roles help my chances at admission significantly? In your opinion, what am I lacking in my application that will stunt my chances?
Thanks so much for reading! Any reply would be greatly appreciated
thanks for the reply @ProfessorPlum168 . do you think i’m good where I am now or should i focus on having even more leadership roles? would this help significantly? I ask this because as a computer software major, I am not sure if having leadership really applies to that field.
looks very impressive if you can pull it off; if you can handle the extra time required for community activities and leadership, go for it. I’m assuming you’re not in 12th grade since you’re asking this question - what grade are you in currently and what schools do you have in mind?
My dream school is the University of Washington’s Computer Science program or UCB’s Computer science program.
do you have some examples of leadership roles I can do that would help my chances?
thanks! @ProfessorPlum168
Being an officer at any prominent club helps. If there is a Programming or Robotics club that would be good to be an officer there. How about Science Olympiad?
How about building a website of some sort?
I’m sure there’s all kinds of community volunteering you can do.
If you take a look around your community, you’ll find a lot of tech-related volunteer opportunities out there. Usually the library and senior centers need tech volunteers. You may not have to look any further than your own school, which may recruit volunteers for it’s help desk or to prepare tablets for incoming freshmen.
CS is a competitive major. You’re going to be up against candidates who do have related ECs and volunteer work. Carve out some time in the summer to “give back”.
My son did some summer volunteering at the Computer Lab at the senior center. He also did a lot of informal helping his GC navigate the school computers. He did some unpaid computer modeling stuff for various professors, which is also volunteering really, though not what most people think of. NHS usually requires volunteer hours. I don’t know if anything actually came of this, but it makes for interesting reading: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/turning-the-tide-college-admissions
It would also be nice to volunteer because you want to help, not just because it will look good on a college application. So yes find a form that you actually want to do, some good suggestions above.
Hi! Community service is only as important as it is to you. For me as an applicant, it was a pretty big deal and was a great majority of my ECs (plus I enjoyed doing it too). Unfortunately, it looks like I was just out of luck this admissions round, but I’ll be helping a lot more people - and if say the volunteer manager or your co-worker write you a LOR, that might do wonders to show who you are outside an academic/competitive environment.