<p>What would you think if you were a college admissions officer and saw these extracurriculars?
What should I focus on?</p>
<p>-Varsity swimming
-FIRST Robotics team-3rd best in state-officer
-Academic team co-captain
-Math tutoring-once a week since 10th grade
-NHS
-Math Honor Society-president
-If it matters at all: I love to cook, and I cook dinner everyday for my family. No extracurricular involvement, though.</p>
<p>Please be honest so I can improve my persona. Thanks.</p>
<p>Focus on getting really good in swimming and robotics. They want someone who excells in one or two areas, not an all-around person.</p>
<p>I think you should focus on what you like to do the most. Don’t join a bunch of clubs just to fill up your EC spaces. Why don’t you try to work with a great chef in a restaurant nearby or start some program to teach others how to cook? To me, that’s much more impressive then swimming halfheartedly or something like that.</p>
<p>I think you have a lot of great commitments, exactly like everyone else :).</p>
<p>“They want someone who excells in one or two areas, not an all-around person.”</p>
<p>Not necessarily, right? I mean, I would hope that there will be a considerable number of people at these good schools who are actually good at many things.</p>
<p>“I would hope that there will be a considerable number of people at these good schools who are actually good at many things.”</p>
<p>Yes it is good to be well rounded and do a good amount of activities. But excelling and being deeply involved in one or two activities > just (minimally) participating in 5-10+ activities</p>
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<p>There are very few people who are truly and deeply well-rounded. For the non-superhumans, you’re much more likely to stand out if you devote yourself to one or two activities because you’ll have more time to spend on them, thus increasing the chance that you’ll accomplish something impressive.</p>
<p>Colleges like to see committment in EC’s rather than dabbling. If you truly excel in many areas that’s great, but mere involvement in many areas can be more of a negative than a positive because it makes you look unfocused.</p>
<p>One guy from my daughter’s school excelled in every area – university research as a high school student, black belt martial artist, community service, perfect SAT and perfect ACT (no lie), and he got rejected all over the Ivies. We were all left scratching our heads until one parent talked to an adcom friend who said they try to get an idea of what kind of person this is from the resume, and his resume may have simply looked like someone who was trying really hard to get into Harvard and they couldn’t see who he really was. I don’t know if that’s really the case, but it’s all we had to go on.</p>
<p>Since it’s tough to excel at swimming for me-do you think robotics would be good? There’s no chance I could be made president, being a senior next year. We have made it to states every year though. </p>
<p>What can I do to really show focus? I love tutoring in math, but there’s only so much depth to that.</p>
<p>Start an online math class! Colleges (especially Stanford) love young entrepreneurs, so starting your own bussiness regarding tutoring would be a big plus.</p>