One of the many threads regarding ECs

Applying to College
1

<p>I was wondering if public/private school plays any difference. I'm worried because I go to a public school in Latvia, a post-soviet country, and there are no such things as clubs like Math clubs and whatever else you have over in the U.S. schools. No Mock trials, no competitions, barely any olympiads, so, besides sport, which I have loads of, although no national level achievements except for one or two and mainly individual clubless activities like streetball or popping, which, I believe, could be considered as a laundry list by CC standards. I'm just wondering if it's taken into consideration when evaluating an applicant.</p>

<p>In short, could I just slide through admission with sports, good GPA/SAT and volunteering?
I'm asking this because I plan to apply to LACs and I read somewhere that they have very specific standards of who is considered "fit" for them.</p>

<p>Thanks to anyone that perceives this post as important enough to answer :).</p>

2

<p>Colleges judge you on the opportunities avaliable. Ex: If you go to a private HS that offers no APs, they can’t judge you on taking no AP classes, though you should probably take some community college courses. If you do sports, volunteering, etc., you’ll probably be fine.</p>

3

<p>Most U.S. colleges don’t factor ECs into admission. The only ones that do are places like HPYS that get so many high stat applicants that they can use ECs to select from that outstanding field. </p>

<p>For places like HPYS that do look at things in addition to stats, activities like hobbies, jobs, community service, out of school activities that you participate in or organize all are things that can impress such colleges. They don’t just look at in school ECs.</p>