<p>Ok, so it seems to me that the more I delve into the world of college admissions, the more I discover how naive my previous perspective was.
I had always thought that people who got into good schools were the ones in like 50 different clubs of all kinds and varieties, and the ones who racked up hundreds of hours of random community service for no good reason.
Basically, I thought that schools favored "well rounded" students who were just all around good. </p>
<p>But now I'm starting to hear a new perspective, that the old adage of joining clubs just to put on your application can actually be harmful to you and to your image as a student. As I started talking to people who are now in their senior year, and have gotten their admission decisions, the ones who got into the best schools told me that colleges are no longer looking for well rounded as much as "well lopsided" students.
In one specific case, I know a student who was heavily involved in over 15 clubs, but told me that he only reported 5 on his application, because most of them were irrelevant and did not substantially add to his image as a person.</p>
<p>The logic behind this seems to be that it is simply "sketchy" to include that you're involved in Physics Clubs, Math Clubs, TV Clubs, etc, when your majoring in English or some other major which doesn't relate to any of these activities.
Same goes for volunteering. Why did you serve soup for 400 hours your junior year of high school when you're majoring in mechanical engineering? It just seems out of place. Why not volunteer to do a construction or physics project with local kids at your YMCA?</p>
<p>I guess I get the idea, but what do you guys think? How have your relevant or irrelevant extracurricular activities played a role in your admissions process? Did you omit any activities that didn't contribute to your character as a whole? And more importantly, how can a person become involved in activities that relate to their profile, instead of succumbing to the traditional laundry list of involvement?</p>
<p>I disagree with the whole volunteer thing (although I agree with everything else). Finding any volunteer work is so difficult in itself. It’s all about connection, you have to know people. In my area at least. You make it sound like any Engineer-aspiring student can volunteer in a construction project just because they want to. And more specifically, volunteering in your soup kitchen has nothing to do with relevancy to your future intended major. It should be purely based on one’s altruism.</p>
<p>Yes, but while it is all good and true that volunteering for the sake of volunteering is important to our society, how many 16 and 17 year olds actually do it for that sole reason? How many kids in your high school cared about about spending their time at a shelter or tutoring just because it was the “right” thing to do? The answer is probably not very many.
And I believe that there’s good reason for this. At that age, sometimes it’s so difficult to find time for those things, even if you care about volunteering just for the common good.</p>
<p>Volunteering SHOULD be based on one’s own altruism, but in today’s society, this is too much to expect.</p>
<p>Admissions are a result of belief in future success, not a reward for past accomplishment.</p>
<p>A laundry list of clubs is worthless simply because being part of a club doesn’t say much about your abilities. If you have a laundry list of national awards in different disciplines, that’s very impressive.</p>
<p>That wasn’t my point. My argument wasn’t about the intentions behind high school students doing volunteer work. I was focusing on the notion that colleges shouldn’t judge you for the type of volunteer work you do, especially based on the “relevancy” to your planned future major. To be rejected admission for volunteering in the soup kitchen when you should’ve been volunteering in house reconstruction because you wanted to be an engineer is completely ridiculous.</p>