<p>A teacher's strike in my province (Ontario, Canada) means that no extracurricular activities will be offered, possibly for as long as 2 years until this situation is resolved with the unions and government. I'm in grade 9, are my dreams to attend an ivy league school still realistic considering this? Will the admissions people be informed of this?</p>
<p>Find things to do outside of your high school, and explain in the common application “additional info” section about the lack of ECs. The admissions people probably won’t know, but you can tell them.</p>
<p>Things you could do outside of school:
- Find a place to volunteer. Put in a lot of hours at a food shelf, library, homeless shelter, etc.
- Do things like run food drives or fund raisers for charities.
- Get a part time job
- Not sure if there are any “club sports” in your city, but that is another option. For example, fencing is a sport not offered at many high schools in our area, but a lot of kids fence through a couple of local fencing clubs.
- Offer tutoring services to younger students at your school or middle school. Better yet, organize a tutoring guild of juniors and seniors that offer free tutoring to younger students.
- Pursue independent ECs. Things like photography, writing (enter poems and stories in contests), drawing/painting, insect collecting. You can still list them on the common app, and sometimes they make good essay fodder.
- Try NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month). You might produce something interesting!
- If there is a college in your town, look into volunteering in a science lab if you are interested in that.
- Get involved in local politics. Volunteer for a campaign or volunteer in a politician’s office. Or volunteer for an organization promoting some issue that is important to you.</p>
<p>Figure out a few things that are important to you and really dig in. Honestly, I think the students that appeal the most to the Ivies are not the ones that are doing traditional school based ECs anyway. Find something unique and make it your own.</p>
<p>On the university application, do you have to list the grade in which you performed that EC? This strike started two months after school started, and i already held some positions (VP - Model U.N Club, Grade 9 Rep. - Science club, Member of debate club). So can i technically say that i did these in grade 12?</p>
<p>You do have to list the grade involved, though I would question MUN if you were VP as a freshman. That being said I personally do not list things from 9th grade that I did not continue (or in your case resumed in 12th grade), it is my own choice, but I know others that do the same.</p>
<p>I think in your situation you might still list the 9th grade items if you put an explanation in the additional info section about the disruption. Who knows if they will be back for your last year, though? I say find your own stuff outside school to focus on.</p>
<p>My local community center only offers basic, for fun activities such as archery, pottery, high school french, and some exercise classes along with miscellaneous items i failed to notice. Would these be good enough to put on the application, especially since i can only be a member (No special positions)?</p>
<p>Also, would a high amount of volunteer hours make up for little involvement in EC’s? How high is high enough?</p>
<p>I would say that those would not carry much weight with an Ivy league school. You need to pick a few things and spend a LOT of time, preferably doing something unique with them. Yes, volunteer hours are good. If you can start volunteering someplace, then maybe even move on to organizing your own efforts along the same lines, that is even better. Volunteering where someone else manages you is good… but building on that to take a leadership role and improve your community is even better. There is no specific number of hours… but if you don’t have a lot of other ECs going on, I would try to go for at least 100 hours/year as a rough ballpark.</p>
<p>Can you start your own club outside of school, with classmates and other friends? For example, instead of MUN, start an International Club or an informal debate society; start your own science club with visits to science labs and museums; etc. I’m sure you have plenty of classmates who are equally disappointed with the lack of extracurriculars who would be happy to join you. Colleges would like that you’ve shown initiative and leadership.</p>