<p>Hi. I am currently a rising junior lost in the hopefully temporarily confusing world of college admissions. I have a 3.9 gpa at one of the top high schools in the country but I am having a hard time figuring out what extracurriculars to do. I am very interested in Math, Finance, and Economics. Currently I am trying to get my work published in the Journal of Finance. Any suggestions of other extracurriculars which match my interests would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>join FBLA
they also have a lot of awards you can win that aren’t too hard</p>
<p>you could join fbla, as pokemon mentioned, but I don’t know of any other related ECs in school. However, it is not uncommon to see people who start a business. I don’t know if you are interested in the business side or just the pure economics. If you are somewhat interested in the business side but don’t want to start a company, there are organized competitions for business proposals. If it is the latter, and you are just interested in the economics/finance side, try to get an internship/job at a bank, investment place, exchange, as an accountant for a company, etc… I think FBLA + interning at the floor of some commodities exchange + being published in said journal would go a long way.</p>
<p>Sometimes it looks good to do something completely different than what your are interested in majoring in. It shows college admissions that you are multidimensional…</p>
<p>Thanks GammaGrozza and pokemon3. I am hoping to do an internship at an investment bank next summer. Also, I had never heard of FBLA but I will look into it and hopefully do that as well. </p>
<p>Also, dfnj123, I am doing other things besides this. For example, I am interested in photography, so I take pictures for my schools yearbook. The question I asked was merely an inquiry of which finance-related extracurriculars I could become involved in.</p>
<p>^i’m going to be 17 and i still LOVE pokemon games LOL</p>
<p>louis-You need ECs that reflect your passion and that are things you will stick with over time. As a rising junior, time is fleeting. Perhaps you could start an econ club at school where you’d be the founder. Publishing an article you wrote on the subject of finance would be a great accomplishment as well. I think you should ignore advice here to do some random EC that’s outside of your areas of interest. Adcoms will likely see that as padding.</p>
<p>^if I’m gonna found an Honor Society(and a club) @ my school in my senior year,do you think the Adcoms will see it as padding???</p>
<p>btw:I don’t do it solely for college app,but i don’t know how to prove it to the Adcoms.</p>
<p>^Honor societys, in my opinion, just never sound good on a college app. This is just my personal opinion, but when I see honor society, here are the first words that come to my mind: asian, padder, superficial, unpassionate, lazy, intelligent, conceited. When I see IB internship, I think: wow, smart, passionate, and northeast. When I see yearbook photographer, I think: artsy, devoted, creative, and Obama supporter. </p>
<p>So instead of founding some meaningless, superficial honor society, maybe found (is that the future tense?) an investment club or the like.</p>
<p>Thanks again everyone, especially gammagrozza with two very helpful posts.</p>
<p>Also:
“When I see IB internship, I think: wow, smart, passionate, and northeast. When I see yearbook photographer, I think: artsy, devoted, creative, and Obama supporter.”</p>
<p>Just some clarification: you describe the traits that my two activities convey to adcoms. Is it okay to be displaying these two varied groups of traits?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>If what you’re essentially asking is if it is okay to appear to have different areas of interest or a diverse personality, than yeah it’s okay. Many schools are looking for some degree of well-roundedness. For the schools that aren’t (Caltech for one, maybe a few others to a lesser degree), the worst they’ll do is just overlook the activities that don’t relate to your academic interest. Is that what you were wondering about?</p>
<p>To give you some reassurance, for my Cal app, I had one essay discussing why I wanted to go into engineering and what activities I did to demonstrate that. But, I had another essay, a humorous one, that focused more on my lighthearted and eclectic personality. I got accepted. Not that I gave a sound proof or anything, but my non-science/math interests didn’t keep me out of Cal engineering.</p>