I’ve been told my extra curricular list looks like a laundry list. What can a HS student do that stands out? I seem to only have one truly outstanding piece of the list:
- President of yearbook club.
- President of mock trial club.
- Robotics club
- President of my grade (elected)
- Peer tutor
- Skipping a year of math (taking precalc over the summer, plan on Calc BC next year)
- I founded and own a 501(c)(3) registered charity, functioning and soon to begin raising funds.
- I go to schools and give lectures about a specific disorder on behalf of a charity which I don't own.
- I won the academic award for geometry last year.
- I know I'll be in the news for my charity a lot in the near future
It’s only a laundry list if those activities are not meaningful for you, or that you cannot describe those activities in a meaningful capacity. It seems to me that you are involved in some fine activities.
Alternatively, check out this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-are-weak-so-whats-good-p1.html
yeah those activities seem good from an external look here.
What you really need to know which students from your school have had luck at getting into competitive colleges and what their leaderships were.
For example, editor in chief of the school newspaper might not sound that brilliant, but every year, one of the 2 editor in chiefs gets into Yale at my school. Clearly this is a highly valued extracurricular activity even if it doesn’t appear as such if you’d post it on CC.
In most cases, admissions committees are better at figuring out when students are just going through the motions than students are at trying to manipulate their EC’s.