Meaningless extra-curriculars

Applying to College
1

<p>Alright just from reading this board and observing my fellow peers in real life it seems as though many do extra-curricular activites for the primary reason being not because they care what their impact could potentially have in another humans life but because it looks better for college. To me it just seems that you are giving a phony representation of your true self. I feel that particapating in activites that you are truly passionate about are geniunely interested in should be of prior importance. Scrolling through some peoples EC's here and on half of them I think to myself who cares, you stated your passion is in a completely different field - why aren't you focusing in that area?</p>

<p>Don't mean to come off as cynical but doesn't anyone else see what is going on?</p>

2

<p>are you saying doing people shouldn't volunteer if its not their passion</p>

<p>I know people that volunteer to meet other people, fill time, not be alone, does that make it wrong</p>

<p>I say, regardless of the motivation, volunteering is good</p>

3

<p>I agree. ^</p>

<p>Not everyone enjoys picking up garbage... But we still need people to do it, whether they enjoy it or not.</p>

4

<p>I agree with you Fastosus, plus I'll add that a lot of kids' EC's tend to be more like "awards." My kids work 20 hours/wk, their sport takes up another 20, music another 20... Does belonging to chess club junior and senior year really add up to 60 hours a week?</p>

<p>My favorite is when National Honor Society is called an EC. They have clean up day once a year? </p>

<p>I think ECs should be limited to those things that take up at least 20 hours a month. Anything else is resume padding.</p>

5

<p>fastosus: I agree with you. Passion is very important, and it's sad to see so very little passion in a bunch of ECs that are spread out all over the place. Now, regarding volunteering, I think it's good, but you should only do it because you want. Colleges are looking for qualities within the applicant, not qualities that an organization or an activity represents.</p>

6

<p>I agree that you don't have to volunteer for the sake of volunteering for it to be good, but just to look better for college seems awfully self-serving to me. It's twisting helping other people into making yourself look better. I know volunteer work needs to be done some way or another, but I don't think something selfless should be turned into something selfish.</p>

7

<p>Required volunteer work= oxymoron.</p>

8

<p>This is why all those "What are my chances" threads are so useless. Everyone has the same EC's regardless of their intended major! (debate, instrument, NHS, mathletes, tennis, hospital volunteering, blah blah blah). I can't recall the last thread I've seen where I was actually impressed by someone's EC's. </p>

<p>The GPA/SAT scores can just be compared with the school's data that's found online.</p>

9

<p>well, maybe if colleges stopped shoving this passion stuff down our throats, kids would not be forced to do ecs that they were not interested in. also, I disagree about 20 hours/month being necessary for ecs. more time= not always more progress. also, part of the problem is that in American society, competition is valued over collaboration. when people are trained to compete, then of course, they will be selfish bc that's what democracy and capitalism is all about. without greed, democracy and capitalism would fail. I realize I sort of went off on a tangent there, but my point is that yes, kids do many ecs to pad their resumes, but colleges are big hypocrites bc they began this whole mess.</p>

10

<p>too me, your colleges essays are where you tell them what your passions are, your ecs show that you arent bluffing. They also (in the case of sports and music and other time consuming stuff) show that you have a balanced life, and that you arent just a bookworm.</p>

11

<p>Replying to the OP, people can have multiple interests. Just because I don't plan on majoring in Theatre in college, don't assume that it's not something I truly enjoy doing in high school. It's relatively hard to show an extracurricular passion in Economics or Arabic, doesn't mean the ECs people who want to study in those fields do are worthless.</p>

12

<p>fastosus: While you certainly have a point, I also really agree with arthurbulla that there can be many legitimate ECs that don't have to do with your stated passion/major. I mean, my academic interests are in English and Film, but I wasn't even a member of my school's literary magazine because another club that meant more to me met at the same time (and it was rather clique-ish and dumb), and film society wasn't only marginally important to me, while I WAS truly passionate about dance and the outdoorsy things I did (rock climbing, student lead ropes course, etc).</p>

13

<p>I think that admissions people are not stupid. I believe they would rather see one activity that takes a lot of time re: the volunteer and that is truthful.</p>

<p>For example, my son plays hockey and lacrosse and used to play football. Those are his main school based activities. In addition, he volunteers every Sunday morning from October through February at in adaptive skate program, with disabled children and young adults; which obviously follows his passion for hockey. It is a significant commitment, involving time every Sunday morning in the early hours of the day. It is so much different in my opinion than a club that might meet once a month or every two months for an hour or too.</p>

<p>He also does Rock Climbing club, plays percussion in the band. He has a steady babysitting job and works full time in the summer as well as playing in two sports leagues in the Summer.</p>

<p>I am hoping that when admissions people look at him they will come off as "This kid is real". He did none of those activities to "make him look better for college", although when he was a sophomore, I did make him start at the adaptive skate program as I told him he needed to do community service, but his continuation with it is all his own.</p>

14

<p>When my D first listed her ECs and number of hours she spent on each, it didn't seem like much at first, and we did have to make some adjustments. As an example, she tutored 3 hours a week on 3 different subjects and taught ballet 3-5 hours a week. Those were just actual time she spent teaching, but she did not include hours she spent preparing for those classes. My D put 15 hrs/week for ballet initially, but she didn't include the rehearsal time, performance time, or travel time. My D didn't do any ECs she didn't want to do and she didn't list anything that was not true.</p>

15

<p>I've always thought volunteering was meaningless, so the only reason I do it (in minimal amounts) is to look good to colleges. In my opinion serving soup at a soup kitchen or picking up garbage at a park helps no one and is unimportant because any other person on Earth could be doing the same exact thing. The only time I'd begin to help humanity was when I could actually make a meaningful difference, which is why I'd want to become a big capitalist dog first and then do philitraphatropy</p>

16

<p>fastosus: I completely agree with that insight. Kids nowadays try to focus on impressing colleges, not about enjoying their lives, which is too bad.</p>

17

<p>
[quote]
plus I'll add that a lot of kids' EC's tend to be more like "awards." My kids work 20 hours/wk, their sport takes up another 20, music another 20... Does belonging to chess club junior and senior year really add up to 60 hours a week?</p>

<p>My favorite is when National Honor Society is called an EC. They have clean up day once a year? </p>

<p>I think ECs should be limited to those things that take up at least 20 hours a month. Anything else is resume padding.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Hey fencer's mom! Been a long time.</p>

<p>I'm going to disagree with you, here, at least in some cases. Let's take my own fencer. He did OK in fencing, and got ranked in his age group. He went to the J. Olympics twice and the Summer Nationals twice and fenced some international tournaments as well as the regular NACs. He didn't spend 20 hours a week at it because, as he said to me, "I just don't love it enough to spend the kind of time I have to spend to be as good as I want to be." I thought that made good sense, so he went on to do other things.</p>

<p>He's a pretty eclectic kid, so he ended up doing practically all the lead roles in his high school theater, going to the finals in the Federal Reserve Challenge (macroeconomics), winning a regional title for his foreign language team, winning several regional titles in Model UN, placing highly in the state in debate, and winning the NCTE essay writing contest.</p>

<p>He didn't do any of these things for his college resume. He just likes doing a lot of things (except schoolwork, sometimes). He achieved pretty highly in these fields without devoting 20 hours per week, and I really did think, at the time, and think now that he deserved to count these as ECs.</p>

<p>Do you disagree?</p>

<p>BTW, this same kid's National Honor Society required several hours a week of tutoring if you were going to belong. So, it really was an EC at his school.</p>

18

<p>Post EC's if they're meaningful to you. That's all there is to it. It doesn't matter how long they take, what matters is how much effort and passion you put into it and if they have meaning. </p>

<p>It's not resume padding if they're important to you.</p>

<p>NHS is such a joke at my school. Last year's president did absolutely nothing and got into Harvard. The vice president actually made an effort but didn't work with the team and got into Dartmouth. This year's president probably won't do anything either. It's so sad. Somebody needs to take some initiative and that'll probably be me.</p>

<p>If NHS actually does do stuff, you should put it down and say what they did, so that colleges would know that it's not a fluff EC.</p>

19

<p>lol@NHS actually doing stuff</p>

<p>I didnt know it was a club until just a few months ago, I thought it was just a nice name for honor roll. When I get in ill just put it under awards, no point in wasting a valuble EC spot for something stupid and worthless like "National honor society" lolerskates</p>