Hi, I am a current junior (HS Class of 2020) and I would like my feedback on the strength of my ECs. My academics/scores are strong so I am aiming for top-20 colleges. I can go into more detail about the rest of my application if needed. I am describing my ECs broadly to stay anonymous since some are pretty specific.
Here is my current list:
Chemistry lab internship at local university, will hopefully publish research paper (in which I will be first author) in late 2019, presented research poster at an undergraduate research conference in fall 2018 (2018-Present)
Appointed position in statewide Student Government Association (2017-Present) and regional sga (2015-present)
Member of competitive engineering team, will possibly rank statewide (2018-Present)
Co-founder of educational coding club at my school, particularly to promote female involvement in computer science (2018-Present)
Co-founder of 3D printing club at my school (2019-Present)
President-elect of Math Honor Society (2018-Present)
FBLA Member (2016-Present), 1st place at regionals 2018, 2019
Volunteer as assistant coach in an adapted sports league (2017-Present)
Member of some other clubs, including NHS, science honor society, Latin honor society, neuroscience club, class organization
Please let me know how I can improve my ECs, or suggest some other activities I might be interested in based on these. I plan to continue all of the above activities through senior year.
I think your extracurriculars are pretty strong and demonstrate a clear spike. I don’t think you should add anything at this point, just work on further developing the ones you have.
To be honest it looks like you are spread thin with a lot of recently added ECs. An admission officer may wonder how you can spend any meaningful amount of time in 10+ activities… especially compared to the varsity athlete, accomplished musician or someone with a job that might invest 15+ hours per week pursuing those activities alone. It would be good to see one become more dominant than the others.
Thank you for the responses! For reference, I am not planning on including the last bullet (clubs I am just a member of) on the Common App. As it stands, I have 8 ECs that I am planning on listing in the activities section (corresponding to the first 8 bullets).
I was also worried that it would look bad that a lot of my clubs started junior year (2018). Many of these opportunities are not available to underclassmen at my school so I could not have started them until this year. Do you think admissions people would red flag this?
Additionally, my two “dominant” ECs are meant to be my lab internship and SGA involvement. I am mainly concerned (my reason for making this post) because I see a lot of students who are varsity athletes AND members of some music organization AND have part-time jobs, in addition to other ECs. From what I have read, many students who apply/are accepted to top colleges don’t have just one of these. I am not an athlete or musician, nor do I have a job, so I wanted to see if the ECs I had listed will be strong enough to make up for that.
@sciencegirl2024 you should let your ECs be based on what you’re interested in. Don’t worry about the things that you aren’t doing that you don’t want to be doing. It looks like a lot and in list form the ones that are most important to you don’t come through. You should be able to convey that somehow in the common app. It will be a little challenging because they aren’t all related, but if it is who you are, tell your story.
Have you done anything for all four years? It looks like you have a lot of one, possibly two year activities, but it could just be the way you are presenting them.
@Groundwork2022 I have done FBLA, my coaching volunteer work, and SGA all four years (although my more important leadership positions and involvement at the state level for SGA did not come until later). I had more ECs that I participated in during freshman year only that I did not include in this post because I don’t consider them as relevant and will not include them on the common app. My school restricts most honor societies and competition-based clubs for upperclassmen, and it is very difficult to start new clubs as a underclassman as well, so most of my meaningful activities began during my junior year.
That makes sense. I would include your early, pre-leadership years when you list your activities. It shows growth, experience, and that you will stick with things. All that looks good.
I agree jmk518. I feel as if the ones with regional recognition can be further developed to possible improve to state and beyond. There’s a reason as to why colleges ask for the years of how much you spent time on your ecs. If they see ecs from ninth grade all the way to like junior year of senior and that you have accomplished something of high distinction, then that’s a plus for you. However, keeping too much ecs that aren’t too supportive can hurt you. I would recommend working hard and try to publish that research article because you can submit that as a supplementary for some colleges like Harvard. Hope this helped and good luck!
@BioType1 Thanks for your comment! My summer plans primarily consist of research so I can get the paper finished by mid-summer. Several people have told me that it would be a boost to my app – I hope they’re right!
