<p>Currently i am involved in 13 activities and i heard colleges do not like for students to be in more that 5 or so. Is that true?
Clubs:
Debate: I have gone to every single tournament and suspected to go to a Harvard tournament Jr or Sr year. Also going to President.
Key Club: Lightly involved this year, but plan on immersing myself more into the program.
Model UN: Plan on possibly being secretary
Library Advisory: Only two other members and we plan activities so the Library can get more attention.<br>
Tennis: Was on Prep Squad, but i hope to make JV
Volunteering: I plan on tutoring and working at the Crisis Nursery</p>
<p>What I am joining next year:
Sophomore Advisory
StuCo: Running for office
Book Club
NHS (Jr year)
Founding: Environmental club
Amnesty: Hopefully president
Mock Trail</p>
<p>So will this scare colleges like Stanford off? </p>
<p>No, it is not true. As long as you keep your grades up and have good test scores (a LOT more important than ECs), do what you want to do. They do like deep commitment to a couple of things. Sounds like you have that in debate. You might pick one more on your list to spend more time on and drop a couple of others if you need to balance time for academics. You can always use the Additional Information space on the common app to show any overflow.</p>
<p>My D loves to do a ton of ECs both when she was in HS and now that she is in college. She likes to be busy. Do as much as you like, not for getting into college, but because you like to do them. The common application has room for 10 ECs only. You end up excluding a ton of them that you did and list only the ones that were most meaningful or the ones that shape the theme that u want to present to the ad com. </p>
<p>There is no “hard limit” for ECs, it’s not as though the adcoms say 5 ECs is ideal but 6 must mean they all mean nothing, that would be rather arbitrary. The key is that the activities you are involved in are ones you genuinely are invested in. Just from reading your list, I got the impression that this may be the case for a few of them, but that some are just to pad your resume. For example, why do you want to join mock trial, sophomore advisory, student council and book club? Is it just to do something else, and could these activities leech time and energy away from another more meaningful activity like debate or tennis? If so, I would recommend staying out of them. </p>
<p>Another thing is that by doing so many activities, it makes it really hard to believe that you are really invested in any of them. Adcoms may think that in order for you to do 13 ECs, your involvement is probably only surface-level in all or most of them, and surface-level ECs are widely considered a waste of time. </p>
<p>^^^^ Last paragraph is true. Once you get to over 6 ECs, your involvement seems superficial. There is no reason for you to add 7 ECs next year. It may help you at a Liberal Arts College, but aside from that, colleges typically like to see a trend in the activites you are involved in and how they are linked to your major. These all seem like arbitrary things you joined and it’s hard to imagine you have a genuine commitment to every one here. </p>
<p>@winchester13 I’m guessing you just finished your freshman or sophomore year of highschool. I would say between my freshman and sophmore years I joined pretty much everything but then again highschool wasn’t exceptionally difficult during those years. Junior year I really only stuck with EC activities that I really cared about because I had more important things to worry about like AP Exams and AP classes. I don’t think you’ll end up scaring any colleges away because chances are you’ll figure out what clubs you’re truly interested in by the end of your sophomore year. Or if you just finished your sophmore year as soon as those AP teachers start hitting you hard with homework and tests and junioritis settles in, EC that aren’t what you’re passionate in start dropping like flies. </p>
<p>Colleges understand that students taking a rigorous course schedule must spend 3 to 4 hours a night on homework. That leaves about 20 hours a week to devote to extracurricular activities. When you complete your EC list, college’s ask you to list your EC’s in order of importance to you – and they prefer students who have a passion for an activity and spend 3-6 hours each week on several activities, rather than students who have a laundry list of activities that they spend one or two hours a week on. FWIW: You don’t have to list eveything you’ve ever done in life on your EC list. See: <a href=“What College Admissions Offices Look for in Extracurricular Activities | HuffPost College”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>Don’t forget that summer is also a time for ECs, though. My kids went to a sort of “liberal arts” high schools that was fairly small, and almost all of the kids did a lot of ECs. Hard to keep clubs and teams going if kids didn’t have quite a few things going at once. Teachers and coaches were pretty accommodating. My kids did leave off some ECs that they had done only freshman and/or sophomore year, and still went over the 10 limit and put some stuff in additional information. Here is a sample for one kid of everything she did and what she listed in the common app. This kid got in everyplace she applied, including some very highly ranked schools.</p>
<p>Quiz Bowl (a top player in our state by senior year, 4 yr)
Fencing (outside school, a top 5 finish in her weapon in our state one year, 3 yr)
A summer program she attended for two years for college credit (3 weeks each year)
An engineering summer program she attended (3 weeks)
FIRST Robotics (2 yr, team was new to school her junior year)
Entomology (hobby outside school for years, won 4-H fair prizes to state fair level)
Bluebird trail monitoring (something she had done for 8 years and had helped hundreds hatch into our neighborhood)
Art (She won 4-H fair awards and outside prizes)
Volunteering (shorter volunteer stints at same place thru high school, senior service project of longer hours at same place, mostly during summer before senior year)
US Biology Olympiad (self studied for two years, only kid from her school to take it)
Programming Club (Senior year only, but she put it on because she was applying for a STEM major)
Writing Club (member, 4 yr)
Future Problem Solvers (only 9th/10th grade, but she put it on because they won an award at state in 10th grade)</p>
<p>She left stuff off the common app:
9th grade volleyball, then quit
Debate - 9th/10th grade, but she didn’t love it
Speech - 9th grade only
Latin - Not for credit class outside school. 1 year, didn’t like it much, didn’t list.
Theater - Helped with costumes and lighting for a few productions. Again, not a big deal, didn’t list.
She also didn’t actually list 4-H as a separate activity because she hated meetings and never went, she just paid dues and did fair entries</p>
<p>One thing she did do is consider very carefully what order to list them. The ones that were most important to her and that she thought matched the emphasis in the rest of her application (essays, probable recommendations, expected major, etc.) were listed at the top. And she created a second version of the common app and reordered her list for the one STEM school she applied to (moving a couple of the STEM-related activities further up the list).</p>
<p>Keep in mind that out of the 3,000 or so 4-year colleges in the US EC’s are important for admission at only a small fraction. Perhaps the most selective 100 or so. You can see what factors matter in admission at schools you are considering by looking at their Common Data Set filings. Most students worry needlessly about EC’s when they’ll play only a small factor or not even be considered!</p>
<p>Second @YoHoYoHo 's recommendation. “How To Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Getting Into College By Standing Out (Without Burning Out)”.</p>
<p>Also, I think it’s important to get involved in many ECs as a frosh and soph to see what excites you. You can narrow it down as you move thru jr and sr yr. To me, it seems like tennis does not really fit with the rest of your ECs.</p>
<p>Well, there is nothing wrong with playing a sport for heath and fitness reasons. In fact, I insisted that my kids do at least one EC that resulted in regular exercise. It didn’t have to be a school team, but they had to do something organized and on a regular schedule. For that reason, I think you should stick with tennis (or do something else athletic).</p>