<p>My problen is that my daughter is a sophomore and has not joined anything at school. I let it go last year, but she is still not joining anything. She says she doesn't like anyone in the organizations. She has a 4.0, but I told her she needs to get involved. She is sick of hearing me tell her that i was very active in H.S. Also, she has a brother, who is a frosh in college. He was very active in sports, organizations and was very well known at the school. I can't even mention his name, without her saying that she is not him. I don't want to compare but getting A's is not enough. What should I do? She doesn't do anything out of school either. She danced for 11 years, but quit last year. Help!!</p>
<p>If she doesn't want to do it, she won't - so don't push her. But don't assume that she'll go to Harvard or Yale without joining or participating in any acitivies (you make her sound like a recluse). However if her grades dip below 4.0 and her SAT's are subpar then don't expect any phenomenal college admits. Has she volunteered? Is she a captain of any sport? Has she done things related to her field of interest? Clubs aren't as important as what I just mentioned ( i believe at least) so have her get around and do something besides clubs if she's so adamant against joining one. The best thing you can do is tell her that if she wants to go a college of her choice, EC's WILL MATTER. Period. Unless it's an insanely large school like Udub which doesn't care.</p>
<p>Point her to the What Are My Chances board and maybe she'll reconsider. :P</p>
<p>I would say to make her join some kind of club. Find out what her interests are and then join clubs with that kind of interest. Also try some new clubs which she might have an interest in. I joined Debate as for college, but now I'm really interested in it. </p>
<p>Also if she truly doesn't like any clubs in school try to join clubs out of school. Maybe do some volunteering.</p>
<p>Thanks. She is definately not a recluse, kakashi 51. She is a girl who likes the mall and movies, nothing too deep. I am pushing her to do volunteer work. Our town has a volunteer group. I guess I will make her give it a try. Hopefully, once she get into it she will like some people. She has travelled 3 times as a student ambassador, but I don't think that colleges give that much weight. Would they?</p>
<p>Yea, the student amabassoder doesn't count for too much.</p>
<p>But just find out what her interests are, and then get her involved in whatever that is, even if its outside of school.</p>
<p>If she is so resistant to doing stuff, I wouldn't try to get her to do volunteering right off the bat. I think she should join Key Club, or some similiar organization, which are usually large, so that some of her friends are in there and she won't get bored. She'll get introduced to volunteering and it'll go from there.</p>
<p>I don't know what student ambassador is, but if she gets a lot out of it, then I'm sure it'll count for something.</p>
<p>Also, since she's a sophomore, get her to apply to the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Seminar which will take place this coming June. It will definitely get her interesting in participating (worked on me).</p>
<p>I'm sorry but you can't lack E.C.s and expect your grades to be enough. With the competition and the amount of kids applying to colleges, you need to have more than just grades - sometimes E.C.s aren't even enough. I'd tell your daughter to do whatever she wants but that grades aren't enough to get her into a good school.</p>
<p>tell her to buck up and say:</p>
<p>"[First name and then last name..for added effect] you will go and join this club or my name isn't candace (or w/e). Now, march up to you room and think about how great you will be..."</p>
<p>Yeah, that wasn't really funny....I need to get back to watching Conan...</p>
<p>Be sure your daughter knows the ramifications of not belonging to or doing anything...Perhaps the facts of reality will show her the importance of ec's. Do not, however, push your daughter into doing anything she doesn't want to do, as that might completely obliterate any desire she has to take part in a certain activity.</p>
<p>Depends on the college ambitions. If she is really devoted to going to a top college or university and will simply not accept going to a lesser (in terms of reputation) school, then I can see the point. ECs do matter, and if she wants to get into a Harvard or Yale, or even an Amherst or Williams, ECs are pretty much necessary.</p>
<p>However, if the ambitions aren't that clear, why not just let her be a normal teenager? There's no reason to force a teenager into doing something that she does not want to simply for the resume booster. Simply in clubs, she'll get little out of it if she is forced to do it (unless she realizes that she likes it). Where is the good in volunteering if you don't enjoy it? Volunteer work is fantastic, and in some environments I enjoy it immensely (although I don't do much at all), but if she doesn't want to do it, why force her?</p>
<p>She'll only been a teenager once, and I don't see the good in forcing her to do something voluntary involuntarily. Sure, if she wants to go to a top college, she needs the ECs. However, I don't know that either way so I err to the side of caution.</p>
<p>My strong suggestion is to get her involved in some kind of structured activity that coincides with her interests. The activity can be in school or out of school.</p>
<p>High school is most people's last opportunity to learn how to amuse themselves in productive ways such as taking a class, being in a club, volunteering, being on a team, being active in a church group, taking an instrument, etc. People who don't gain those valuable skills by the time they leave high school will have great difficulty learning them later because they won't knwo basics that others take for granted. </p>
<p>Doing some kind of structured activity like this also will help your D learn more about herself, develop skills and insights that will help her for a lifetime, and she will also have a better idea of what she wants to do with her life after high school.</p>
<p>Don't worry.</p>
<p>As for admissions, at any school where the extracurricular record counts, the admissions process is erratic and unpredictable. Your daughter is a shoo-in at most colleges. The Harvards of the world have such low admissions rate that things like the mood of the admissions officer and the temperature in Scottsbluff, Nebraska can have an impact.</p>
<p>you know, for me, leadership is pretty addictive. Perhaps i just like power</p>
<p>what is your daughter interested in? you could talk with her and try and work out what ec's she can do that fit in with that. like, if she likes music, she could join the choir, or play in the orchestra/band or something. you say she likes movies - maybe you could get her interested in making her own movies, or something? (or maybe i've watched my sister's dawson's creek dvds too much...) </p>
<p>what might work, is to talk to the parents of her friends. find out what ecs they're into, and then say something to your daughter like "well, tiffany does so-and-so, and michelle and sarah play on such-and-such a team". </p>
<p>why did she quit dance? maybe you can get her interested in starting up again - if she did ballet, maybe try something like hip-hop? it's much more fun. :)</p>
<p>One of the best pieces of parenting advice I've ever heard is: when I am concerned about my child's progress in a certain area, I must improve myself in that area.</p>
<p>Therefore: Never mention that you were active in high school. Never mention her brother in this context.</p>
<p>Therefore: Why did she stop dance? Is there something in this area that you could do to improve yourself, and thereby possibly entice her back to dance? 11 years is a huge investment to allow to decay.</p>
<p>I think I would require that she do some sort of EC, but I would let the EC or ECs be up to her. And I would simply say that IMO such things are good ideas for personal growth and for college admissions, and I cannot in good conscience allow her to hurt herself in those two areas. Period. It would have nothing to do with what I did in high school, her brother did in high school, or which EC I think she should do now.</p>
<p>It's quite possible that since no club has sparked her interest, she would have the most fun with starting her own club. If she's interested in movies, perhaps she could start writing movie reviews and she and her friends could publish a newsletter of them - or, as, punkrockeeyore said, maybe she could make her own movies (my school offers Video Production classes - does hers?) Also, you really should be clear on the reasons she quit dance (maybe because she realized how intense competition is in the dance field and she didn't want to do it longterm - that definitely makes sense).</p>
<p>In the end, it's up to her. If she really doesn't want to get involved and she's content to go to whatever college she's accepted into, she's going to resist your push toward ECs and you'll just end up with a rebellious daughter. I'm grateful to my parents for having me start cello at the age of 6, but I'm glad that when we moved last year they let me take a year off lessons (even though that means my 11-year-old sister is about as good as I am now...o_O). Don't get obsessed over your daughter's involvements or try to live vicariously through her. Let her live her own life ;)</p>
<p>"In the end, it's up to her. If she really doesn't want to get involved and she's content to go to whatever college she's accepted into, she's going to resist your push toward ECs and you'll just end up with a rebellious daughter. "</p>
<p>I don't think that she is bound to rebel if her parents mandate that she get involved in some ECs. I think that students rebel if parents mandate the specific ECs, but not if parents work together with students to find or create ECs that match the students' interests.</p>
<p>As the previous poster suggested, since the D likes movies, she could create a movie review club or make her own movies. There are summer and weekend courses in moving making, script writing and photography.</p>
<p>She could start a movie review club informally with a group of friends and no advisor or she could find an advisor at her school who would be willing to work with them as an official school club. The students could do reviews for their student or a local newspaper. Incidentally, people writing movie reviews get free passes. That's a big perk.</p>
<p>The D also could contact her local paper to see if they'd like to have some movie reviews written from a student perspective. She should submit a sample review. This tends to work best in small communities or with weekly community newspapers, but can work also in large cities.</p>