<p>Does the practice of just showing up to one meeting of a club and then listing it on college apps bother anyone as much as it bothers me? </p>
<p>The thing is that I'm involved in my high school's quiz bowl team, and a lot of our underclassmen are probably some of the worst quiz players in existence, and on top of that they tend to go on for months without showing up to meetings or practices. Also one time, there was a sophomore girl who was conveniently well enough to go take the AMC, but not well enough to come with the team to a competition the very same day. That same girl also showed up to the Spring 2009 KMO merely to take up space and then get their advisor's siggie on her activity sheet because she did absolutely NOTHING to help our Knowledge Master team and used the breaks to catch up on her studying for a bio test. </p>
<p>Also, in my school, there was a girl who actually managed to fool MIT and a bunch of Ivy schools into thinking that she was part of the Robotics team even though she showed up to ONE meeting and did nothing beyond that, so those schools accepted her.</p>
<p>That definitely bothers me. I hate going to meetings for clubs I’m passionate about and seeing all these irritating giggly underclassmen sitting in a corner and gossiping while the rest of us are actually doing something productive for the club we have joined.</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t have as much a problem with resume padders as it does with trip joiners. Actually thats more of a problem with just the club I started :P. It’s like “Hey guys, lets go on a trip.” Members: “Yea!Yea!”. Officers “Hey guys we’re having a burger stand to raise money for the trip, you guys should bring stuff in for it!” . Members: “…”. It sucks we had to cancel the fundraiser and we are now down $ 20 for it.</p>
<p>Yeah, that happens a lot in French Honor Society in my school. People tend to back out of events if they know they have to pay money, bring something, or miss class for an event.</p>
<p>There was this other dude in my school’s quiz bowl group who showed up for one meeting at the beginning of the year, and our 3 most recent ones (we meet on a weekly basis). Evidently, he’s trying to save face for our advisors so he can still get their signatures on his activity sheet.</p>
<p>honestly a few clubs aren’t gonna make or break an applicant
the only clubs that really count are the ones that a. you write about in your essays or b. you have leadership roles in
if you only come one meeting all year those two things don’t apply so it really doesn’t matter…</p>
<p>Its troublesome, but I’m pretty sure its such a common occurrence simply listing something on your app won’t make a tremendous difference. Like your complaint about that girl getting in to MIT because of robotics, I’m most certainly sure that wasn’t the only reason. She mus have had some other great qualifications that got her in</p>
<p>Our school has about 34 clubs. only 1-3 are usually legit. others are bsbsbs. and plus clubs are pretty much insignificant in the eyes of top tier schools</p>