<p>What happens if an applicant had great awards (i.e. Scholastic Art & Writing, International Mathematical Olympiad Gold, etc.) but not many EC's? Would this count against him/her? By posting this, I'm not referring to anyone in particular. I'm just asking this out of pure curiosity...</p>
<p>It depends how you want to define an EC. Someone whose life is devoted to trailing all over the planet to compete in math olympiads probably ought to write about that experience.</p>
<p>I see that you are in Singapore. Any college/university that you would apply to that can't figure out that international students are not clones of their age peers in the USA is not a place that you want to study anyway. Don't sweat the EC thing so much. It's a weird US cultural phenomenon that really doesn't have good parallels in other cultures.</p>
<p>Even if you don't have weekly meetings for an Olympiad team or a creative writing class every Tuesday, you're still pursuing interests outside of school. Those are EC's--and pretty impressive ones, at that.</p>