<p>Well I already know that colleges love to see leadership and an active voice in the activities you participate in, but what if you just take on those leadership roles for the glamour of the title? Although a student may be president of everything, they might contribute/gain nothing from their experience. Will colleges be able to see that the student simply ran for the title? Or will they simply be impressed by the word "President" on an application? </p>
<p>Sometimes its just frustrating to see students who are the most popular winning all of these leadership roles, despite their flippant attitude towards the role once they're elected.</p>
<p>It seems like everyone’s the president of something, so I don’t think a leadership title is all that impressive to begin with. But no, they can’t really tell whether you were devoted or not.</p>
<p>smileykins, I agree with you. Also, club and sports team presidencies tend to be decided (in my case) by advisors who usually have some sort of conflict of interest. This bias, while unfair, isn’t really dealt with properly. I hope that, in the end, leadership positions do not count for much in the college app because I didn’t have a lot of good leadership opportunities.</p>
<p>People usually don’t know just how much leadership they exercise even involuntarily. If there’s ever been a little kid who looked up to you, took your advice seriously, and tried to be more like you, you’ve been a leader with unfathomably more power than the president of any club. And if you were a constructive influence whom that kid will remember for years, looking back and thinking “_____ was always one of my heroes”, you’ve accomplished something better than you could ever do by getting voted into a position.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s hard to look past popularity especially in a unique social scene like high school. It really has distracted me from my actual goals in life.</p>
<p>I’m going to try and construct this post as carefully as possible.</p>
<p>I realize that in high school it seems that the more “popular” students usually receive titles in clubs and positions within organizations around the school. They’re not popular because of some magical force, usually they’re popular because people actually like them and wouldn’t mind being under their leadership. There’s new secret ingredients to popularity, it’s the likability factor that develops when someone puts themselves out there socially and is nice to people.</p>
<p>My high school was a typical suburban school of about 2,000. I was elected student body president for my last year of high school because of how I presented myself. I provided inspiration in terms of direction for our student government. Also, most of my peers in student government highly respected me and like me. So, they campaigned for me and their support garnered support from their friends. My secret to success: I was nice. I never had any feuds with people and I shared a vision and distributed that to everyone through various forms. In fact, I should have been elected. I was one of the only openly gay males in my conservative high school. I was running against our head cheerleader who had all the right connections to middle school (eight graders vote) and high school “popular” students. My best friend ran against me, a superintendent’s daughter with a killer reputation of being nice/having fun. And her brother had the eighth grade cornered. </p>
<p>I just campaigned the hell out of that election. I literally stopped and talked to people in the hall and presented myself. Somehow, I won and became “popular”. My best friend won senior class president, no surprise. </p>
<p>My point is that these elections may seem like a popularity contest because that’s what leadership is. People elect other people that they feel comfortable around. People who share a passion and are not afraid to put themselves out there. High school is screwed up because of stereotypes and unfair advantages, but you can beat the system. And naturally, certain positions held in certain organizations look good on an application because it means that you proved yourself (and I’m talking about organizations that actually make a significant impact, not clubs that meet monthly and just do volunteering). </p>
<p>Staff selected positions are completely screwy; though. Many teachers do have bias and certain teachers have more leverage than others.</p>