<p>What do you think is more important: grades or extracurricular activities?
If you can only have one, what would you rather choose?</p>
<p>I definitely know how important is EC's when applying to colleges, and I hope you know it too. However, if you have very good grades but no EC, average colleges still accept you. But if you have bad grades and tons of good EC's, I think no college will accept you.</p>
<p>Ps: This is not an essay prompt. Worrying about my EC make me think about this.</p>
<p>For college admissions, courses, grades, and test scores are generally the most important factors.</p>
<p>ECs’ importance gets magnified when your courses, grades, and test scores are near the maximum possible in competition with others with similar near-maximum courses, grades, and test scores (e.g. at super-selective colleges). But you do need to have near-maximum courses, grades, and test scores to even get to the point where ECs are very important.</p>
<p>Specific ECs may be very important in some circumstances, such as being a recruited athlete, or when applying to a specialty school where the ECs are highly relevant to that specific school.</p>
<p>Extracurricular activities have no importance without grades.</p>
<p>
That’s true.</p>
<p>The others are right. This isn’t even debatable.</p>
<p>This is not the correct question to ask. Thats like asking, which is more important when running a race; the start or the finish? They both play different roles in the admissions process, and are not based on a “sliding scale” paradigm if you will. Think of Grades and Scores as gateway issues. Once you’re past a certain threshold, your grades/scores don’t matter. The consensus for this threshold seems to be top 5% with a 2250+ sat. After that, there are diminishing returns, or no returns at all. Once you’ve gotten your foot in the door, your extracurriculars and essays carry you to either rejection or acceptance. So you see, grades are more like a prerequisite than anything else. Posters above are right to an extent. But I believe that the fundamental question to ask is not “do I have bad grades”. It should be “How good is good enough?”. If you have “bad” grades, such as a 3.7 gpa and a 2200 SAT, but have extraordinary ecs, your below average scores may be enough to cross the threshold, and your ECs will convince them that you are indeed a viable candidate. If you have a 2350 SAT and a 4.0 GPA with no ECs, the same school will pass you through the first round, but surely reject you in the second round. Therefore, contrary to what I said above, GPA and ECs DO kind of operate in a sliding scale in that sense because good ECs can make admissions officers blind to your “bad” scores. If we’re dealing with absolute maximums, they say that a bad gpa will kill you. But this is certainly not the case. If we assume that you have a really bad gpa (2.5), we must also assume that you have very good ECs (#1 baseball recruit in the US) with which you can easily get into Harvard, or any ivy league college. This metaphor falls short at the other end of the stick, because there is a limit to how high your scores can get (4.0 gpa with a 2400 SAT). This is impressive, but considering you have marginal extracurriculars, you will only get into your state school, at best. Therefore, I argue that its not so obvious that scores+gpa are more important. You have to find the right balance between the two; good enough scores to pass the threshold, Great ECs to pull you the rest of the way. I believe that this analysis is more accurate because above does not take into account superstar-level extracurriculars.</p>
<p>“Once you’ve gotten your foot in the door, your extracurriculars and essays carry you to either rejection or acceptance.”</p>
<p>At most colleges they just let you in if your GPA/SAT are up to that level. There are really only a small number of colleges that would reject anybody with a 4.0 and a 2300.</p>
<p>Just my opinion, in order of importance -
Grades/course load>SAT>Essay>Recommendations>EC’s. </p>
<p>The problem with the average EC’s is that Adcom’s don’t have the time to measure and verify them. One kid’s voluteerism at a nursing home cleaning bedpans is another kid’s volunteerism at the nursing home visiting grandma.</p>
<p>There must be a balance but grades definitely outweigh extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Last year, my son had a 3.7 unweighted gpa and a 2300 SAT.</p>
<p>But not much in the way of EC’s.</p>
<p>The lack of ECs definitely hurt him.</p>
<p>He got waitlisted at a lot of good schools. One good EC might have put him over the top.</p>
<p>My impression is that ECs count for less at large state universities, where they go more by the numbers, because they have so many thousands of applicants.</p>
<p>Success at the most rigorous academic program offered in your school is a prerequisite for admission at the most selective colleges. To say “grades” are most important without specifying academic rigor would suggest the 4.0 student in honors classes beats a 3.85 student doing AP work which is not true. In unusual circumstances national level athletic talent can trump grades and I think it is best to think of recruited athletes in a separate and hardly comparable admissions pool.</p>
<p>schlaag said “If we assume that you have a really bad gpa (2.5), we must also assume that you have very good ECs (#1 baseball recruit in the US) with which you can easily get into Harvard, or any ivy league college.”
What if you have a 4.5 GPA and 2400 SAT but very few EC’s and no leadership, will you get into Harvard or any ivy league college?
Another case, if you have 3.0 GPA, 2000 SAT, but the number one basketball player in your state, will you get into Harvard or any ivy league college?</p>
<p>“What if you have a 4.5 GPA and 2400 SAT but very few EC’s and no leadership, will you get into Harvard or any ivy league college?” Maybe not HYP but perhaps some of the others.</p>
<p>" if you have 3.0 GPA, 2000 SAT, but the number one basketball player in your state, will you get into Harvard or any ivy league college? " What state? Indiana? How good is this kid? Again the GPA is problematic but it’s a maybe.</p>
<p>Unless you’re 7 feet tall, 350 pounds, and can play in the low post with your back to the basket, grades are more important.</p>
<p>This isn’t true. Only ECA can’t replace grades. Why a university is going to accept a student if he has 95% chances of failing? Most universities accept people based on grade+SAT and ECA only matter for maybe 3-5 %</p>
<p>if someone is a prodigy that he can basket with one finger of his weaker hands, colleges might be interested in him. But still you need certain gpa for elite college. And no universities is going to reject a student only fos his ECA. Why? Because that where holistic admission came from.</p>
<p>If it isn’t true, show me how can this happen?</p>
<p>Why HPYS accept more than 30% of 4.0/2300-2400 and reject 99.999% of 3.0/2000 ?</p>
<p>At this moment, as I am watching Harvard struggle against Arizona, I wish they were even more willing than they are to compromise on grades for an applicant who can dunk a basketball with two hands.</p>
<p>There are not many NBA basketball player coming from Harvard. Jeremy Lin is one of the rare. By the way, he got good grades too.</p>
<p>Uh, Harvard beat Arizona, messed up my bracket. And Gonzaga lost too, so.</p>
<p>sorry sorry, that last post I got mixed up with New Mexico and Arizona :P</p>