As my title says, can you guys rate my extracurriculars and see if it’s okay they don’t have a concrete theme. Well here goes:
Year round Track
Boy Scouts(almost eagle)
Mathletes
Science Olympiads
Academic Bowl
Robotics(VEX World qualifyers)
Programming Club
Jazz Ensemble
Biking Club(Founded)
Gardening Club
Do you enjoy them and are they an extension of what you’re passionate about? Then they’re great.
Are you trophy hunting to try and impress admissions boards? They will see right through that.
No I enjoy them all, but was wondeirng how impressive they would be and if I should consider working more and finding other ec’s im passionate abotu that also “look better”
When it comes to ECs, depth is more important than breadth.
These are pretty average ECs for a competitive applicant to top schools, but nothing too impressive. If you have some leadership position to prove possibly prove the point of “depth” in your ECs, then they may carry more weight. Nevertheless, none of these are unique without some big award/major leadership.
I agree with @SomeKid123 , your ECs are pretty run-of-the-mill. Props to you for getting involved in all of them, though. As @Muad_dib put it, depth is definitely better than breadth. You need to show passion, proficiency, and leadership in a couple ECs rather than just being a member of a bunch of clubs across different interests. It seems like most of your ECs are connected to school - I’d recommend looking for an internship or lab work in your field of intended study. While creating a club seems cool, involvement in Biking Club or Gardening Club won’t really appeal to admissions departments like Science Olympiad or Boy Scouts would. Aim for leadership in the ECs you’re passionate about, involve yourself in more out of school ECs, and do the best you can in all of the competition based ECs. Purely participating in Science Olympiad and placing mid-pack isn’t nearly as good as medaling or even getting a top-3 place in an event. GL!
However, Biking Club would be great if you participated in races, biked every week, etc., and knew how to repair bikes. Gardening Club would be great if you created a community garden, or experimented with splicing to great new species, or raised food and made kids try vegetables. I don’t agree that Robotics, or Science Olympiad, or any particular activity, is “better” than others—it comes down to the depth of your involvement and how interesting you make it sound. I would much rather be the wannabe engineer who created a gardening club that established a garden for the school than one of the 59 kids who sat around at Robotics Club, all staring at the three people actually working on the tournament-entry project.
For example, I know of one club that sounds great at my kids’ school that is really just a large number of them listening to a guest speaker every few weeks, whereas the Cooking Club has them actually ferret out and prepare foods themselves for each meeting, and then they serve it to teachers, and periodically they have taken food and prepared special meals for other events (like catering).
Fundamentally I agree with @BooBooBear , but doing well in a club like Science Olympiad would look better than involvement in Biking/Gardening Club nonetheless, unless you do some big community service project through either of them. For example, NHS is widely regarded as a hugely important club, but in all honesty, with my experiences with it, it is nothing more than a glorified service club. However, colleges still love to see this listed, as it shows them you have “leadership”. If it is just a club where you are sitting around with a bunch of other bike-enthusiasts at school talking about the best bikes or something, it won’t help your admission standpoint. It seems like based on your proficiency in Robotics, you have an aptitude for STEM. As such, I would encourage you to attempt to become as competitive as possible in Science Olympiad, Mathletes and Academic Bowl. Doing well in these will also help you develop a theme of STEM as a major. While starting your own club and getting involved in Gardening Club is good, don’t expect it to help you much in the admissions department unless it has something to do with community service or something to that effect. The problem with what @BooBooBear said is that admissions departments won’t really get a full summary of what you actually do in each club, unless you discuss it in your essays. For that reason, while Cooking Club may be more involvement and actually more engaging than the other club, the other club could actually “look better” on applications. Never do a club just so it “looks good” - admissions departments can see right through that. But, if you are passionate about any of your clubs, think proactively about how you could use it to stand out (ex. planting a garden for the school through Gardening Club). I think if you explained to us what you do in Biking and Gardening Clubs it would help us out when you give you feedback. All love to all, GL!
It’s not what you do, but why you do what you do and how you engage with your activities.
Well put @gate84