<p>Throughout high school I kept myself from doing extracurriculars because I wanted to focus on my grades since I was starting a competitive high school. I'm not good at sports, and even if I wanted to do a sport, transportation to go to sports practices was a big problem for me. And lastly, I kept myself from getting involved in anything that I didn't feel passionate about. </p>
<p>I tried really hard to get into some volunteer programs but where I live, a lot of people are very college oriented so good extracurriculars were hard to get. </p>
<p>I don't mean to make this sound like a sob story but I definitely had some obstacles and unsupportive parents that made it difficult to reach the goals I wanted to in my high school career. </p>
<p>So far my only extra curricular activities are chair of honor society and I did some volunteer service freshman year. My grades are okay i'm shooting for a 3.9 by end of first semester of senior year. My standardized test scores are baddd :(. </p>
<p>Is it useless for me to consider really selective/top tier colleges considering that I haven't accomplished much? Is it too late for me to pick up on something?</p>
<p>So are you saying you go home and stare at a wall after school every day? Surely you must do something besides school. And there are no “objectively good” extracurriculars.</p>
<p>@LordCthulhu
I get distracted easily and my workload for junior year is particularly heavy so I’m up atleast until 10pm just trying to finish hw.</p>
<p>Where will you be applying? Yes, many top, top schools care about ECs, but many schools do not. Many won’t even more than glance at them.</p>
<p>What are your SAT or ACT scores? You say that they’re “bad”. Well if they’re not ivy-like, then the whole EC concern may not be a big deal at all.</p>
<p>The good new is that Chair of honor society is a very good EC. More good news is that you aren’t expected to have done a sport or even volunteered. The bad news is that you are expected to demonstrate some kind of interest, involvement, curiosity, activity, what is usually referred to as a passion, for “really selective/top tier colleges”. But the “really baaddd” test scores are also a big problem.</p>
<p>Well so far I’ve only taken the pre PSATS, which I got a 1550 on
My biggest concern is that my lack of involvement from freshman and sophmore year will be heavily counted against me. I’m going to pick up on extracurriculars that genuinely interest me this year, and I’m just hoping I don’t come across to colleges as someone trying to get their ish together last minute…</p>
<p>(I’m shooting for Cornell, and other colleges with a 15%-20% acceptance rate)</p>
<p>Perhaps you should focus instead on some SAT/ACT prep and leave the ECs behind <a href=“except%20the%20one%20or%20two%20that%20really%20interest%20you”>/U</a>. If you eventually get 1550 on your SATs, your choice of colleges will be the sort that do not evaluate ECs for admission. 1550 will also surely eliminate Cornell and indeed, any top-25 sort of college from your realistic list of target colleges.</p>
<p>The bulk (+80%) of colleges in the US do not care about ECs. These tend to be less selective colleges. You should focus on your GPA and a solid go at ACT or SAT. Good luck to you.</p>
