Please Help! How Can I Build Up My Application?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

Hi, everyone! Columbia is my dream school, and I want to create a nearly perfect application for when I apply in two years (I’m a sophomore.) I have two major problems: my school is MAJORLY lacking in extracurriculars and they offer little AP classes! If I could, I would do all AP next year and senior year, but that’s impossible given their course selection. Here is my current course load:
Honors Pre-Calc
Honors US History
Honors Chem
Honors Spanish IV
Dual-Enrollment English Comp (with my local college) I and II
College first-year course that doesn’t really do anything

Next year I plan on taking AP Calc AB, AP Gov, and AP Lit, and my senior year I’ll take AP Calc BC and AP Language. I also plan on taking classes at OSU, but will Columbia weigh these classes equally? I see some people’s apps on here and they have full AP or IB course loads. What should I do?

The other major problem is the extreme lack of ECs. This is the part of my application that I’m most worried about. I have almost NO extracurriculars; all I have is tutoring and being apart of youth council at my church. I have a good amount of volunteering hours, but… yeah. What should I do to build up my ECs? I really enjoy writing, drawing, and painting. It’s too bad that my school has NO clubs or groups dealing with this. I don’t want to join random clubs that I don’t have an interest in just so I can have a lot of ECs; I want them to be specific to my interests.

I’m not worried about my ability to perform academically; my GPA is pretty high and I am a straight A student. I’m just worried about how the lack of opportunities will affect my chances. can someone give me direction on what I should do? Thank you so much!

2

You have the right mindset. Do quality ECs and get leadership positions in activities that are closely related to the field you will pursue later on in college.

3

Read “How To Be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport for thoughts on ECs.

4

@dglover Can you create clubs? You mentioned you enjoy art/writing - maybe open up a student critique group? What about teaching art or creative writing to children? Not having any established clubs can be kinda tough, but it also gives you the opportunity to be a trailblazer and start something big.

Even if you fail, the experience will be worth it (and you can still probably put it on your application). I came this close to directing a staged/teched performance of a play I wrote freshman year, but the actors, all older than me, ended up not taking me seriously enough and flaked out on all of our rehearsals the week of the show. Even though we didn’t make it to performance, I learned a ton about directorship and making one’s self out to be a leader.

5

@dglover There is no such thing as a perfect application. @wherevioletsgrow gave some helpful practical advice, so I’m going to give some vague, motivational life stuff.

If you’re really motivated about something, finding established channels to work through won’t be an issue - if they’re not there, you’ll create the opportunities. Beyond that, though, you can take the initiative to look for opportunities beyond your school. Look at stuff in your city, and if you get bored with that, look at statewide programs, and then look nationally. There are a lot of opportunities out there for artists and writers especially.

Certainly schools like having students with “strong” academics and ECs - you talk about “building” your resume, for example. I feel like this is really only part of the equation, though. If you want to have a really striking application, you also have to build yourself personally.

I hate to see people in high school focusing solely on Getting Into College. You have to have some achievements to get in, yeah, and you have to have good grades (by the way, 2 AP’s per year with a couple extra college classes senior year was enough for me, so your courseload looks fine), but really the way you distinguish yourself is by convincing your application reader that you’re an interesting person who will make an impact in something, somehow, and the easiest way to do this is to be interesting. The easiest way to be interesting is by finding out what you enjoy and getting deeply, personally involved in those things.

Speaking of which, you’re a sophomore, which means you don’t have to have your life figured out. To be honest, you probably shouldn’t be worrying about this now. In my case, I wasn’t even considering applying to any Ivy until the beginning of my senior year of high school.

tl;dr: Stop thinking about college, start thinking about yourself.

6

My son did not do a single EC within the school in his 4 years of high school, and yet he has two pages long of EC and awards on his own that were not school related. He picked what he liked to do, competed in robotics for 7 years, enter into multiple science competitions, like Google Science Fair, Google Solved for X scholar, etc, invented and marketed his own low cost biohacking equipment, volunteers and mentoring others, did paid research internships at the local university in the summer, etc. He was busy with his EC 30 hours a week, but never stayed a minute longer in school than he had to because there was nothing of interest to him.

My daughter was very similar. She did joined a few honor society clubs, but majority of her EC were outside of the school as well. She knows how to fix cars, operate all sorts of power tools, build and tinker, loves to write, take photos, and draw. She compiled a large art and maker portfolio on her own over the years and submitted them during the college applications as supplements, even though they were unrelated to her engineering major.

Find something you like to do to build your EC portfolio. Use your EC’s to identify your passions and the path that you want to pursue in the future. Don’t waste your time with busy club activities that are no interest to you.

7

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine and admissions committees do notice grammatical errors and start looking for other grammatical errors.

Definition of ‘apart’ from Merriam Webster Dictionary:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apart

“separated by an amount of space, time; not together”

He stood with his feet planted far apart
his parents are now living *apart/i

ECs not at your school:
Church groups
Music/vocal performances
Girl Scouts/Boy scouts
Candy Stripers (local hospitals)
Volunteer for a cause (Salvation Army, Red Cross, Homeless Shelters, Food Banks)
Club sports
Museum Docent
etc.
You can’t just join these; you have to have a passion for what you want to do, otherwise, its just a laundry list of organizations.

Do you have a hobby?

8

^ You started your post with a run on sentence, Bea.

9

I’m not the one applying ;:wink:

10

No, but you are the one criticizing. 8-|

On the other hand, the second half of your post was very helpful. =D>