<p>I thought colleges wanted to see you stick with an EC and gain leadership positions over time.
For example, I've been in journalism three years, was an editor for two and am now editor in chief. I've been in Sierra club three years as an officer and director of community outreach/community service opprotunities. I've been a girl scout since first grade and earned my silver award along with numerous leadership and community service awards. I've been on jv and varsity track and have been both a witness and attorney for a mock trial team that went to the state competition.
However, I've been told that these EC's are "low" or average. What are the EC's that top colleges are looking for?</p>
<p>Something unique, or something where you accomplish major awards are the best. </p>
<p>You were probably told that your EC’s are average because they are quite common, and do not stand out much. Also, while you have had good commitment, your activites show no sign of a concentrated interests. Track/journalism/Sierra Club/Girl Scouts have absolutely nothing in common, and colleges like to see you pick an area and excel in it.</p>
<p>thanks for the info</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/82799-how-impress-adcoms-your-extracurriculars.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/82799-how-impress-adcoms-your-extracurriculars.html</a></p>
<p>The link NSM posted has a great post (actually written by NSM) listing some outstanding ECs.</p>
<p>If that’s not enough (and it’s a list that’s far from exhaustive), I think the best way to get a feel for what qualifies as outstanding is to look through some of the results threads on the HYP forums. There are people who excell in multiple areas–your breadth is not problem with your ECs. What is the “problem” (well, less a problem than just the reason your ECs don’t stand out) is that you don’t have high levels of achievement in any of them. </p>
<p>I’d recommend picking up Cal Newport’s “How to Be a High School Superstar” if you’re really interested in what distinguishes top applicants.</p>
<p>As glassesarechic recommended, check out How to Be a High School Superstar. Basically, if you’re not amazing at anything, you have to do something that interests you, and you need to do it/find that interest by giving yourself free time to explore different areas.</p>
<p>You’ll want to refer to Northstarmom’s post on page one of the thread she gave you the link to. There, she lists outstanding EC’s and excellent EC’s.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the vast majority of colleges don’t really care about EC’s. Academics are far and away the most important thing. Where are you applying? If you’ve got your eye on schools like Yale and Stanford, your EC’s are average and won’t give you a boost. If your schools of interest are University of Michigan or UC San Diego or the like, EC’s matter very little in comparison with test scores, GPA, rank, and teacher recommendations, so they still won’t help much anyway. I hope you’ve done all these things because you enjoyed doing them, not for college; it sounds like you are doing them for yourself, so that’s good.</p>
<p>“What is the “problem” (well, less a problem than just the reason your ECs don’t stand out) is that you don’t have high levels of achievement in any of them.”</p>
<p>I believe Editor-in-Chief is pretty high achievement in that particular EC. And I have been instrumental in turning the paper around, printing longer issues, and motivated and organized the class to attend a week long National High School Journalism Conference.
Also, the Girl Scout Silver Award is the second highest award you can achieve. It’s one step down from Gold Award which is similar to Eagle Scout in boy scouts. It involved 40 hours of work on a community service project and included a proposal, and presentation at the end where I received my award at a ceremony.
I know the others don’t have very high levels of achievement, but those two seem to to me.</p>
<p>And I’m mostly interested in Liberal Arts colleges like Colby, Reed, Amherst, Bowdoin, and Williams.</p>
<p>Editor-in-Chief is a good achievement. If you could get articles/internship in the local newspaper or something would be much better than your school’s paper; but theres not much higher that you can get than that.
Silver award is adequate, but not a ‘high achievement’. Getting gold would be a significant distinction between silver…As a boy scout, I know that the being a life scout (silver award) isn’t recognized at all, but being an eagle scout is a large achievement. Its a major leap. from 40 hour service project to 100+ hour service projects. Enormous leap, not just a small distinction. Also, you could go onto Venturing Scouts and get distinctions there too…</p>
<p>^These are ways to improve your ECs/advice about them.</p>
<p>^^^^^
Thanks, that was helpful. I’m a senior, so I won’t have time to get my gold award for admissions season is over bit I’ll look into publishing articles in a real paper. That’s a great suggestion.</p>