GPA: 4.29 (4.66 scale)
AP Bio, AP CS A, AP Calc BC, AP Stats, AP Chem, AP Lang, AP Gov
No significant EC’s in last two years due to extenuating circumstances in family. This year I joined science olympiad and robotics team at my school. Both are heavily time consuming and conlict with each other ocassionally. Therefore, I must prioritize one over the other. Struggling to decide which one to prioritize. Since I’m a junior I don’t have much time to figure things out. I’m interested in both. I’m a new member in both clubs.
My stats are good but I need a good EC for junior year. Which one should I pick?
Do you think that you will be more interested in science (studying the natural universe) or engineering (solving design problems using principles from science and math)?
Also, no one outside of your high school knows what your high school’s weighted GPA means.
I’ve had kids that have done both. They liked science olympiad better because they prefer study events to build events, and there is a way bigger variety of stuff to do. You should pick based on whichever one you like better rather than worrying about how it will look on an application.
Both are great, so pick which one you think you’ll like best. My D tried both but she liked sci oly better because there was more diversity in the type of events and subject matter.
If you like them both equally, think about what you may want to study in college. Lots of the robotics kids go on to CS and ECE.
Agree with the others - and don’t worry about being a junior. There’s many colleges that don’t even look at ECs. Better to have of course and perhaps your extenuating circumstance provides cover for lack of but my point is this lack of ECs won’t eliminate you from having a great four year college experience. Yes it may narrow the list of potentials but the list will still have plenty of meat.
I agree with picking whichever one you think you will like best.
I’d just add I would personally consider social factors as part of that process. Like, if you have friends doing one or the other and would enjoy doing an activity with them, to me that is a perfectly good reason to choose an activity. People can get really serious about these things, like everything you do has to reflect a lifelong commitment to a certain career path. But doing fun things with friends is a really critical part of life, not least in high school.
And if you need a serious-sounding rationale, your social development at this age is important, and colleges know that. In fact, doing fun things with friends is often considered a critical part of the residential college system in the US, including in preparation for being a great colleague in your future endeavors.
So someone who has treated their activities in HS as, among other things, an opportunity to make friends, deepen friendships, and have fun with friends, is on the right track for doing that all again in college. And that is valuable in a way I think a lot of people with high college ambitions often overlook.
But that’s not the main reason to do it, the main reason is that is a big part of what life in general should be about.
Echoing the chorus to pick the activity you think you will enjoy the most. The only caveat with robotics is you may not get to do much if the team is well-established. My S eventually captained his robotics team, but as a new member he wasn’t assigned many tasks.
Of course pick the one you like better (academic and social factors), but if they are equivalent, and speaking from a purely application/EC perspective, choose the one where you will have the most impact because that is what AO’s are looking for in EC’s. IMO, it is probably easier to do that in the SO because there are more subcategories where you can point to individual impact with objective measures. I may be wrong because I don’t know much about robotics clubs, but it seems to be much more team/group based where if you are not a leader, it would be hard to quantify your contribution.