I’m currently a sophomore in high school and am finding it difficult to find an ample number of extracurriculars (or at least ones that I’m passionate about and am willing to put on a college application).
I’m in a robotics team and technology club at the moment, for a total of 2 extracurriculars. However, the technology club doesn’t really do anything aside from fundraise, so I don’t think I’d put it on the Common App. I’ve considered joining FBLA, with the chance to be nationally recognized. Other than that, I have also sent an application to NHS, which would raise my EC’s to a total of 4.
Simply put, this doesn’t seem like enough to me-- but I’m not really sure how I can get any more involved. My school doesn’t offer any other clubs worth joining (trust me, I’ve looked through), and I’m not really into sports.
I tried to look online for city-wide organizations related to computer science, but it’s really difficult to find any. The search terms don’t yield any relevant results.
So at the moment, I’m kind of stuck. If anyone has any advice for how I can get more involved, that would be great. I guess the ideal scenario would be to find a volunteer or computer science organization that is not exclusive to my school, since I’m out of options on that front.
I think that you should only participate in ECs that you enjoy and that matter to you. Then find a school that appreciates what you have done.
Whether a lack of ECs will limit your university acceptances is likely to depend upon where you want to attend. For Ivy League and equivalent you need great grades, rigorous courses, great references, great essays, and great ECs and either a “hook” or a lot of luck. However, if you don’t want to attend an Ivy (nor MIT nor Stanford) then things get a lot less stressful. Great grades, great references, and strong SAT scores is enough for many very good universities.
Check out “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport.
“The basic message of the book is this: Don’t wear yourself out taking as many classes as you can and being involved in every club and sport. Instead, leave yourself enough free time to explore your interests. Cultivate one interest and make it into something special that will make you stand out among the other applicants and get you into the toughest schools, even if your grades and scores aren’t stellar. Newport calls this the “relaxed superstar approach,” and he shows you how to really do this, breaking the process down into three principles, explained and illustrated with real life examples of students who got into top schools: (1) underscheduling—making sure you have copious amounts of free time to pursue interesting things, (2) focusing on one or two pursuits instead of trying to be a “jack of all trades,” and (3) innovation—developing an interesting and important activity or project in your area of interest. This fruit yielded by this strategy, an interesting life and real, meaningful achievements, is sure to help not only with college admissions, but getting a job, starting a business, or whatever your goals.”
We don’t know what tier of colleges you have in mind, but all the tops like some breadth, not just depth. They like it when kids can try new things, along the way. When you look in the community, consider more than just CS related. And it’s never too early to start some good community service, the sort where you roll up your sleeves and dig in, help the needy, make a regular commitment.
If there aren’t any clubs at your school that you like, why not try creating one? Are you good enough at compsci to teach others? Do you have any ideas about how technology club can do more than fundraisers? Maybe you just learn more compsci at home and create a project out of that. There are a lot of possibilities for how you can apply your interests that make you more interesting and desirable to colleges.
I’m currently holding a 4.9/5.0 GPA, and have consistently tested in the range of 1470-1590 with SAT practice tests. To that regard, I do not consider test scores/GPA/class rigor to be a weakpoint. My current aim is to apply to 6 or 7 top 20 universities. With respect, I’m looking for more specific advice, as I’m already quite informed with the basics of the admissions process.
I am familiar with and have read the book you are referring to. I understand that everyone’s situation is unique, and there no is golden formula to admittance, but what I’m really calling on is for people who had similar experiences to speak out. What city organizations, volunteer or otherwise, have you found and how have they shaped your experiences?
Thank you for your advice. Although sophomore year is still likely to early to plan out the specifics of where to apply to college, I have a general list of the types of schools I am after.
For reference, my academics are top tier at the moment, so I’m mainly concerned with ways to improve ECs/hooks.
State of Residency: CO
Applications Plan:
Safety
CU Boulder
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Match
Colorado School of Mines
Cornell
Georgia Tech
Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
University of Washington
Reach
Duke
Caltech
UCB
Carnegie Mellon
Brown
John Hopkins University
Do you have any nearby universities? If so, some professors are open to having high schoolers work and volunteer in their labs and that alone carries a lot of weight to massive research universities like JHU. I don’t know what major you intend on pursuing but JHU applicants who have research experience get an extra bump (especially for BME). It’s better to have a few solid ECs than wasting your time the usual high school clubs that show up on nearly every other kids application.
Can you organize more activities for your technology club? Get speakers from a local university (PhD students like to talk about their research), do a project with middle schoolers to introduce them to some tech area, do something g to help your school.
Kids with research/intern experience don’t usually “get a bump,” per se. Rather, depending on the major and the college tier, there can be some expectation a kid pursued appropriate opportunities. Of course, it depends on what’s available.
Robotics and tech club are a solid start. Is there tech crew for performamces? There will be ways to pick up collaborative experiences. It’s not just about programming. It’s also about teamwork, work toward project goals, problem solving. I.e., the larger body of skills, not just ECs that have CS in the title or description.
They definitely get a bump. I used my FERPA rights (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.) to review the response from my college application for giggles before graduation and needless to say research experience and internships at another big research university was a huge boost.
Anyways his list is very CS oriented so his big thing doesn’t have to be research but an internship/volunteering at a tech firm where he could get some good project experience would make him standout. Colleges accept students that they deem highly capable of being trained to be employable upon graduation (better job placement = better rankings & donations = better future income) and having some good work experience instead of the usual clubs would put him leagues ahead of others.
@Nick3126 Do you have any family friends in the field you want to eventually break into? You can try and network your way into either a paid or unpaid opportunity. It’ll really help you later on down the road when you’re applying for college-level internships and they seek relevant experience as well.
Response to First Post:
I have a few semi-sized universities from which I could try to get involved in research. I don’t really have much exposure to this sort of activity in my community though, so I don’t see myself as being able to pull it off. At my school, there isn’t as much of a culture for prestige or national competitiveness in terms of academics.
Response to Second Post:
I think that an internship would be a wonderful route I could potentially take the summer of my sophomore or junior year. However, I am on the younger spectrum of the age group for sophomores, so it may prove to be a challenge to find a position.
I do have parents working in the CS field, and as you’ve brought up, that could be helpful towards making connections.
I live in Denver, which is centered around a number of big tech firms. It’s also about an hours drive from the Air Force Academy, which would likely have some other good opportunities for an aspiring CS student.
I definitely hear what you’re saying these programs as being centered more around leadership skills than raw coding talent. I hadn’t thought about the possibility of tech crew, but I’ll keep that in the back of my head.
There isn’t much motivation at my school for pursuing CS extracurriculars. The focus is more athletic-oriented, and out of over 2,500 students, only about 20 are participating in technology clubs. For this reason, I don’t think I would be able to bring together enough enthusiasm to get people to help out with such an event. Thanks otherwise, though.
I don’t think there is enough enthusiasm at my school for such activities, that’s why I’m outsourcing and trying to look for other activities in my community.
So… getting more people is a kind of leadership. My kid went to a school that was kind of a liberal arts HS. A couple of kids joined at a robotics team at another school, than came back and started a team at our school. They drafted a bunch of their friends to join (including my D), got a teacher to coach them, and grew it into a respectable team that is still going strong. A few years later, the kids started a drive to open a makerspace st the school. It just opened last month. It is a self fulfilling prophecy to assume you can’t drum up interest and grow this type of club st your school.
Thanks for sharing your daughter’s experience; that’s valuable to hear about. When it comes to gauging whether or not there will be interest in the club, I would agree that it is best not to jump to any conclusions. However, having served as leaders to both technology associations, it has been incredibly difficult to recruit members. In this case, since both of the aforementioned clubs are low on members, I don’t think founding a new club is an option. It simply comes down to the fact that I don’t think there is any demand for it. Why should I start a new club if the two existing technology organizations are struggling to survive as is?
To everyone, I appreciate all the feedback so far. I’ll keep a tentative list of the suggestions I have been receiving, and take time to analyze it this weekend. Your ideas have been pretty helpful.
Consider community service
Compsci teaching program (ex. middle schoolers, recruiting PhD students, website?)
Technology fundraising (ex. fundraising for makerbot space in a local middle school)
Research at nearby university
Internship at local tech company
Working as a part of a tech crew
If you have anything to add to that list of possibilities, be sure to let me know. Please be as specific as possible with your suggestions. Otherwise, if you know of some EC hooks used by those who have succeeded as a CS applicants, that would also be helpful.
Another cool EC hook my friend had in HS for CS was coding an app (I believe it was a game) and actually getting it approved on the iTunes store. You could perhaps make a fun little independent project out of that. Additionally, I believe Hackathons allow high school students to attend and you can go just for the workshops to learn a few things and meet some brilliant students. Maybe your project could win and that looks really impressive or secure an internship there from the companies there. Also there’s a lot of free goodies :)!