<p>So why wouldn’t you want to sell the version of yourself that you believed in? The more clubs you join, or sports you take up, or service hours you haphazardly collect just for your resume, the less you feel connected to your college application and the less likely you are to come off as genuine and interesting. </p>
<p>By contrast, the student who spends high school doing what he loves–whether that’s writing in his room or working on political campaigns around his city–will have an enthusiasm that extends beyond his resume and into his essays and recs.</p>
<p>Glass, for the little quip about rounded students being “rare”. That’s not true, it harder to be well rounded than it is to be an “academic geek”. I have a several friends who play sports in the fall and spring, make straight As, and hold a at least 1 leadership position each. </p>
<p>And I absolutely agree that it’s harder to be well-rounded, which is why well-rounded students so rarely distinguish themselves enough to make it into top schools. It also explains why the truly well-rounded, versus merely unfocused, applicants are so rare (why wouldn’t they be rare if it’s harder to be well-rounded?). Colleges don’t really care how hard it is to do what you’re doing; they care about how impressive it is. Or, as Cal Newport would say (he has a marvelous blog called Study Hacks), things that are hard to explain are more impressive than things that are hard to do.</p>
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<p>…So what do they offer a college? Are they recruitable for sports? Is your school particularly difficult, with straight-A’s being nearly impossible? Are these leadership positions state/national level? If not, these friends haven’t distinguished themselves in any particular way. They are, in the realm of HYPSM-admissions, average. Not a desirable thing to be when only 8% of applicants are accepted.</p>
<p>eh, They’re Top 100 basketball players and 3 others have gotten offers to play football in college., Our school is 76th in the nation so i suppose that making straight A’s is hard for the majority.(Never was really a problem for me Both have Beta club/NHS leadership positions. One won a National merit scholarship. )</p>
<p>& I currently play club soccer and i’m playing varsity soccer in the spring.</p>
<p>Recruited athletes offer top schools just that: athleticism for their sports teams. </p>
<p>The point I’m trying to make is that a student who does as many things as these kids but doesn’t distinguish themselves to a remarkable point (ie, a recruitable level, which totally changes the playing field for college admissions) is unlikely to see themselves admitted to a top school. Varsity sports, a 4.0, and a smattering of leadership positions isn’t rare or impressive; being a recruited athlete (or any other state-or-nationally ranked anything) is.</p>
<p>How many service hours do you think a student should accumulate throughout their high school years? How many is too little? Also, is there such a thing as too many service hours?</p>
<p>After seeing about a million apps on this website, I have noticed that there is no such thing as too much or too little. </p>
<p>I have seen kids get accepted into the Ivys with 0 hours while I’ve seen kids get denied with 500+ hours.</p>
<p>What’s most important is that you dedicate yourself to something SPECIFIC and just spend all your time on it. There is no point in spending several hours here and there at just about every place. Of course you’ll get a lot of hours but colleges look more about quality than quantity and if they see that you have volunteered at a specific place (or etc.) then they will value that greatly.</p>
<p>So pick something you love, stick to it, and do it as much as you can. :)</p>
<p>Cross Country (15+ hours a week – summer/fall)
varsity all 4 years
state qualifier all 4 years
captain junior + senior years</p>
<p>Track and Field (15+ hours a week – winter/spring)
varsity all 3 years (played soccer freshman year)
state qualifier all 3 years
placed 5th at state in the 3200m run
placed 8th at state in the 1600m run
captain junior + senior years</p>
<p>Those are by no means all my EC’s, but they’re definitely the two I spend the most time on. All my other EC’s are just things like Academic Team (Captain), NHS (Vice President), helped start a youth group in my community, helped start a service project called Holy Soles… and so on. Would any of these be considered “strong” ?</p>
<p>The past two years I was an immature 14 and 15 year old kid, who didn’t really want to do anything with his life besides have a 2 or higher kill/death ratio on Call of duty. I succeeded at that pretty much, but here I am with average grades, probably out of the top 10% and my only EC for my Fr/Soph year was Yearbook, no leadership position. At the end of last year I decided that just going home and slacking off because I was living in the moment is fruitless and thought about colleges and how cool it would be to go to Stanford or Tulane or Vandy or somewhere else fancy and far away from Maryland. After “extensive” (yes… very extensive… :P) research I determined that I have a .000003456789% chance of gaining acceptance to these schools primarily because I haven’t gone to Stanford over the summer for 10 grand to learn molecular biology or interned with doctors at Hopkins (which is 2 blocks from my house…) >.<</p>
<p>Now for a less depressing approach and plea for some sort of answers - Can what I do as a Junior/ Senior do anything for the situation which I have already screwed up for myself? I have some sort of negative approach to life where I am afraid of the future and such a perfectionist that rather than say, “I haven’t done much my first two years but I’ll do better this year!” I say, “Because I haven’t done anything my first two years I’m screwed and I’ll make better use of my time playing Xbox all day.” Trying to fix that but it’s more of a personality thing at the moment. Ok so back on topic- extra curricular- I don’t have any and I am stubborn enough to think I can get into Stanford. I’m good at writing and I’m in newspaper and yearbook and some silly other clubs but that isn’t the same as writing a bestselling book as someone else pointed out. </p>
<p>Cliche-yep but cliches are cliches for a reason ;)</p>
<p>Unless they are utter morons or completely shallow, schools should look at the depth of your EC’s not on the sheer number of them. Every school info session, including Yale, said that they would rather see someone who has a passion for one thing than an applicant that dabbles in a little bit of everything and does something for the sake of having it on their application. We told our daughter to follow her passion and not worry about doing a multitude of things if it is theater that makes her happy. Her essay is about her experiences on the tech crew and how that has made her a happy person.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if research substitutes for volunteer service?</p>
<p>For the next year, I want to devote my time to researching for microfunding and microlending rather than volunteering and wasting my time for things I don’t have any interest in at all.</p>
<p>But what is considered “research”, exactly? I’m not going to be in a lab designing experiments obviously so what do you think would constitute as research to a college other then sitting behind a computer and googling things which I’m sure colleges won’t find appealing.</p>
<p>I’m starting junior year right now, and I’m beginning to start feeling stressed about EC’s. Basically, I pretty much wasted my freshman and sophomore years and have little to show for them other than stats (6 hard AP’s), mainly due to the fact that I slaved on the school swim team even though I never made it to varsity. I started to get involved in FBLA and Science Olympiad last year, but I don’t have leadership positions in either one. I feel like all I’ve done is have a bunch of unfocused EC’s that don’t show quality. From what I’ve read, quality and leadership potential were the main points of focus, as well as doing something you’re passionate about.
I’m very passionate about playing the violin; I’ve been playing for six years and I practice about three hours daily, sometimes more. I have a high seat in my school’s honors orchestra, and I helped found a community music group that plays at retirement centers. The problem is, I have no idea how to take this passion and turn it into something that will impress good colleges (I’m hoping for HYPS). I’m talking about stuff that will show leadership potential, etc. How could I go about doing this?</p>
<p>The number itself won’t matter as much as the impact. How much money did you raise with a fundraiser you organized? How much good did you do the kid you tutored (ie, did his grades go up a significant amount)? etc</p>
<p>If you spend your weekends accumulating random service hours rather than devoting yourself to one cause, then that would be too many service hours in the sense that it will make no difference to adcoms. </p>
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<p>No, it doesn’t–because colleges aren’t looking for a particular checklist of activities. You should invest your time in things that interest you and that you can excel in. Whether that thing is service, research, or scribbling poems really doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Daxlo5–I totally understand your point! BUT, come on, we all have to do things we “don’t want to do”. My parents don’t enjoy paying their mortgage or paying for car insurance. They probably disliked changing nasty little diapers as well.</p>
<p>If the world is to become a better place, it will require people to make an effort to do things that don’t just benefit themselves. If you can only see EC’s as a means to getting into college I am afraid you might not be seeing the big picture yet. Colleges are looking for kids that are willing to get involved, that are likely to make a difference. I don’t know that washing the hair of an old lady at the nursing home is something “I love doing” but someone has to do it. She is a fellow human being that deserves some dignity.</p>
<p>I always go by the motto “the difference between winers and losers is that winners do the things that losers don’t want to”. It doesn’t mean that winners must always enjoy doing these things–but they know to accomplish anything of any value there must be some sacrifice. Top colleges have a choice and I don’t think they want selfish losers (even if they’re super smart).</p>
<p>So get out there and do those EC’s–unless you really don’t want to.</p>
<p>These chances threads are often by nervous, scared, uninformed, brash and yet still very charming high schoolers (for the most part)…</p>
<p>The responses are by…college alum and current students?..equally uninformed high school peers?..random people on the internet?..well…who the heck knows?</p>
<p>Anyway, a response that I’ve seen many times is, “Your ECs are weak.” This line seems to be used by both posters who are trying just to be funny/mean and those posters who are seriously trying to help. Hell, I’ve even used that line myself!</p>
<p>NorthStarMom (in response to your reply to Ferny claiming that disadvantaged kids who lack self-confidence shouldn’t apply to top schools anyway): </p>
<p>What a heartless response. You sound as if you don’t have a clue about the realities that face economically disadvantaged kids. Imagine growing up with the deck stacked against you. Can you imagine that? Sure, it can be overcome, but overcoming such obstacles takes a heck of a lot more strength, initiative, and drive than most EC-stars from privileged backgrounds ever have to display.</p>