<p>So I'm not sure if my EC's are as strong as they can be... any advice would be much appreciated! I'm looking at schools like Washington U in St. Louis, Notre Dame, Northwestern, UPenn, Haverford, Boston College, William & Mary, and Knox.</p>
<p>Musical - cast member, 2 years
Ballet - 3 years
Peer Mediation - 4 years
Spanish Tutor - 3 years
Choir - member, 4 years
Fair Trade - secretary and leader of Fair Trade store through my church, 4 years
Mission Work - co-leader of trip planning committee (organizing mission trips) and member of the core team for mission work in my state, 4 years
Volunteer at a vet clinic - 2 years
School club to help incoming freshman - 3 years
"Semi-founder" and leader of high school youth group - 2 years</p>
<p>What can I improve? How do I stack up? Should I put all of these things on my college apps? Should I join more, do more, lead more? Thanks!!</p>
<p>I don’t know, you’ve shown commitment, but this is just a list of clubs. I only see a litttle leadership, and also wonder how you have enough time to be truly involved in all 9 clubs.</p>
<p>Honestly, you don’t need to join that many clubs or do that many ECs to get into a good college. I would imagine that a list like this looks banal to an admission officer. Showing that you are committed to doing something very interesting in one area of your ECs is much more impressive than doing very small, facile tasks in 10 different ECs.</p>
<p>(Please don’t take offense; I’m just trying to give you my perspective on it)</p>
<p>Okay thank you!!! This is what I’ve been waiting to hear. I am very involved in many of my clubs, but I know it probably looks like I’m just joining to put it on a college app. I think I know what to do about that… but the leadership thing is hard. My school doesn’t offer much opportunity for leadership in clubs. But anyway, thank you so much for the honest advice!</p>
<p>Very few colleges really factor ECs into admission, and those colleges typically are ones like Havard that --unlike most colleges which struggle to find students with the academic stats the colleges require – can use ECs to pick and choose from among its overabundance of high stat applicants.</p>
<p>Some colleges use ECs for merit aid consideration.</p>
<p>For the colleges that use ECs as admission/merit aid consideration, what you accomplish with your ECs is far more important than the length of your EC list or the # of officer positions that you have.</p>
<p>For instance-- what have you accomplished at a vet clinic? If you basically showed up and did the same thing for a couple of years, that’s not particularly impressive. If, though, you started a program to have abandoned/abused pets adopted or if you started a training program for pet sitters, that would be impressive.</p>
<p>Similarly – did you organize any projects for the youth group you co-founded? What does the youth group do? What have you done to assist it?</p>
<p>Okay, that’s interesting to know. I haven’t started much of anything at the vet clinic, but I’ve been helpful with paperwork/filing, cleaning, secretary duties, etc. The youth group has been a bigger task, I organize all events/projects (usually twice monthly) including community service, fun stuff, group discussions, etc.</p>
<p>Also, leadership positions in clubs don’t necessarily matter that much. It’s much more impressive if you can go somewhere outside of school (i.e., in your case, the vet clinic) where they don’t offer positions for high schoolers (I don’t know if they do at your vet clinic/other place where you do an activity), make your way in, and start something innovative (like Northstarmom said in her 4th paragraph). But filing papers and stuff isn’t that impressive.</p>
<p>EDIT: If you’re wondering what you could do, think about what interests you and what you can accomplish quickly (I’m only saying this because you’re already a Senior)… Ideally, it should be something that boggles the admission officer’s mind and makes them think, “Wow, how did he/she do that?” For example, there was once a guy on this forum who claimed to have built his own particle accelerator in his basement or something. Whether or not it’s true, it’s impressive as hell and admission officers had no idea how he did something like that*. Doing a project like that completely trumps being a member of 5 clubs that anyone can sign up for.</p>
<p>*Obviously, you shouldn’t lie on your application, lol.</p>
<p>Okay, I understand that. Most of my activities are outside of school (6 of 10), and I’ve done more impressive stuff with the mission work and Fair Trade organizations. I’ve found that its difficult to explain exactly what I’ve done in these activities. Okay, would my list look any better like this:</p>
<p>Musical - cast member, 2 years
Ballet - 3 years
Spanish Tutor - 3 years
Choir - member, 4 years
Fair Trade - secretary and leader of Fair Trade store through my church, 4 years
Mission Work - co-leader of trip planning committee (organizing mission trips) and member of the core team for mission work in my state, 4 years
Volunteer at a vet clinic - 2 years
Founder and leader of high school youth group - 2 years</p>
<p>All I did was take out two boring school clubs that I’m not as involved in. Would that hurt/help my chances at all?</p>
<p>I personally think you have a good record! My ECs also are all over the place (and I’m applying to a lot of the same places as you)- I don’t think it means that I’m just joining things to join them, I just really like trying new things and being involved in a variety of activities. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be involved in 9 or whatever clubs and be fully committed to all of them. Some things aren’t a big time commitment, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy them right?</p>
<p>That being said, my advice for you is to make sure that you highlight your favorite activities and what they mean to you. Like everyone has been saying, it is important to show your passion and leadership. For example, you could write a little blurb on a resume (additional info section) about your responsibilities as a youth group leader, fair trade <em>insert title here</em>, etc. </p>
<p>This might be way out there, but if you’re anything like me your youth group/fair trade/mission trip/Spanish tutor/(this might be too big of a stretch)vet volunteering activities all stem from the same passion. Same with your music/theatre/dance. Just a thought.</p>
<p>Morgan27 - thank you so much! I definitely understand that admissions people may think I’m joining just so that it looks good on my app, but you really get it! They DO stem from the same passion and I do love all of my activities or I wouldn’t do them in the first place. I do want to make it look as good as possible on my apps but I do them for a reason and I’m passionate about all of them - otherwise it wouldn’t be so difficult to cut down my list! Anyway, thanks a ton :)</p>
<p>Can anyone give me another perspective on if cutting out two boring school clubs would help my application? (See the list above) I wasn’t as involved and didn’t hold any leadership positions… but I was involved for 4 years in one club and 3 years in the other. What should I do?</p>
<p>I think they highlight a part of your application that isn’t seen elsewhere (school leadership), and that they are leadership roles just by nature of the club. But if you didn’t invest any time in them I would say skip it. That’s what I’m doing.</p>
<p>That list s great. You do not need ot join any other groups. Write a great essay on the peer mediation or one ofthe others for which you have dedicated a lot of time over the past four years. You sound like a great admission to a campus. good luck!</p>
<p>"Can anyone give me another perspective on if cutting out two boring school clubs would help my application? (See the list above) "</p>
<p>Dropping the boring clubs won’t hurt you. You’ll also have more time to devote to strengthening activities that you love, and that will be a plus.</p>