Rank my ECs!!!

Hello CC people,

I have already started the Common Application and a friend of mine said that “5 activities isn’t much.” Mind you, this guy is sort of an overachiever–he has about 14 activities on his the last time I checked, most of which are one time events that I urged him not to put. That being said, are my ECs lackluster? Here are my activities as I put them on my CA:

  1. YMCA 21st Century Learning Tutor (Grades 11 and 12; 4 hr/week; 20 wk/year) -providing academic support to 1st through 3rd grade students in the core subjects and facilitating in outdoor play time
  2. FIRST Robotics (Grades 10 and 12; 30 hr/week; 6 wk/year) -authored the "Chairman's Essay" and assisted in logo design
  3. VEX Robotics (Grade 11; 2 hr/week; 25 wk/year) -responsible for the structural aspects of the robot; a consult in planning and design
  4. Guitar player at a local music academy (Grades 9, 10, and 12; 4 hr/week; 35 wk/year) -lead guitar player at student performances with focus in classic rock; currently composing music for my "Graduation Project"
  5. Church Thrift Store Volunteer (Grades 9, 10, 11, and 12; 3 hr/week; 25 wk/year) -Organizing inventory in the warehouse, receiving incoming donations, and assisting customers with pick-up of large items

Besides these 5, I’m also in my school’s Beta Club and NHS. If I decide to put Beta Club, I would put it for Grades 9, 10, 11, 12 with 40 hours per year serving a myriad of non-profit organizations in my community. If I decide to put NHS, I would put it for Grade 11 and 12 with 12 hours per year (yep, not a lot) in peer tutoring of ESL students. However, I feel as though these two are very generic so I don’t know if I should really include them.

I’m also starting an environmental research internship at a state university next month!, but I’m not sure how to put it on the application as it’s only during my senior year.

If it even matters, here are the colleges I’m applying to (my OOS colleges keep changing, I know!):
UNC-CH
ECU
NC State
Tulane
Vanderbilt
Emory
Tufts
NEU

bumpy bump

Your activities are perfectly fine. It is what you do not how bit a list of clubs you can amass. And I would put in the Beta Club (because it does sound that you do good work there) and you can list NHS under honors or ECs.

Your friend has 14 activities? Well, he can only list ten of them.

He listed the rest on the additional information under the writing section

Your ECs sound perfectly fine. I tink you should order them by how much they mean to you (including Beta Club/NHS). Don’t worry too much about your overachiever friend.