Too many extracurriculars?

Applying to College
1

<p>Simple question: will extracurriculars too diverse look bad? I don't mean the compulsive-club-joiner type extracurriculars (I don't have too many of those), I mean actual, real, passionate extracurriculars. I have a few:</p>

<p>-I've been taking ancient Greek as an independent study course since middle school. </p>

<p>-I've been doing research for quite a while now (science/medicine related)</p>

<p>-I co-founded a business last year that was very successful. We created a website and a few Mac software programs which were downloaded literally hundreds of thousands of times</p>

<p>-I reviewed some products and wrote a bunch of front-page articles for this popular Mac website (800,000 - 1,000,000 views per month, 70,000 unique views per month).</p>

<p>Random : I've won various awards ( and stuff, tutored lots and lots of kids (both for profit and for nothing), participated in a few clubs (interscholastic Chess club competitions, some computer club competitions, some that I've forgotten about), e.t.c.</p>

<p>What concerns me was that I was reading another thread, and someone said that it wasn't good to have too many random, diverse extracurriculars; rather, one should exhibit passion in a single area. Do you think the above would look good on an application together? Should I minimize some of them and exaggerate others? In case you're getting the wrong message, I'm not one of those kids who's paranoid about his extracurriculars - I'm fine with what I have, and I know what I have is pretty strong, but I'm just not sure that ancient Greek/Latin vibes well with science research and entrepreneurialism and writing. To an adcom, it might suggest a compulsory extracurricular seeker who's solely interested in impressing colleges, even though I'm not that sort of person. I simply happen to love studying ancient Greek, being caught up in the thrill of business, writing, and researching.</p>

<p>I'd really hate to simply omit one or two of the above on a college application. Please help!</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

2

<p>Do not omit!! It doesn't matter "how many" you write down unless you show that you are "involved". somekids just join clubs or do activities but fail to show committment and involvemnt, but what i've read above is excellent. colleges like diverse students, but also like focused students as well. </p>

<p>one interesting note, good luck with that ISEF thing. i've been the cleveland OH as an observer in 8th grade. loved the experience and i wished that i can actually compete there, but it conflicted with my senior graduation this year so i didn't do a science project. but definitely, go present an awesome project and you'll have a good chance of getting scholarships.</p>

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<p>they're not as random as you think. they can really be divided into 3 sections: languages, computers, religion. </p>

<p>You're allowed to have 3 major interests and do things related to them. You seem truely passionate about each and having 3 allows you to commit a fair amount of time to each. Actually, I think most people have "3 main" things. For instance, mine so far could prob. be divided into athletics, politics, and activism each which I spend a great amount of time on and am very passionate about. Here's how I look at it; if you're passionate about something(s) and I mean truely passionate, you'll be able to look at everything and see that somehow, they really do connect into major areas. As I said, yours are languages, computers/technology, and religion. Not random at all. Keep it up! Very impressive!</p>

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<p>Oh yeah, if you have participated in clubs/activities but it was a short term thing, note that. and some you've just lost interest......</p>

<p>do like a prioritized list,<br>
and things on the top is the most invovled and important things
and things on the bottom is not so invovled but even the membership and some invovlement is worth noting.</p>

<p>i did that for my college app, and helped me to get scholarships.</p>

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<p>Thanks for help everyone! </p>

<p>@Watch, yeah, that does seem about right. Thanks.</p>