<p>People on this thread say that only the top schools look at EC's and take them into account. What do they mean by top schools? Top 100? Top 50? Top 20? Also, is that true, where EC only greatly matter in those top schools? Thank you.</p>
<p>In my opinion, all colleges look at EC but they weigh it differently. For easy-to-get-in schools, they don’t pay much attention. For the Ives I think they really take it into consideration because most applicants have perfect/nearly perfect GPA+SATs, so there’s not that many aspects to distinguish some applicants from the pool. That’s why EC’s are important and personal statement too!</p>
<p>You can look at the school’s common data set, section C7, to see what criteria are considered.</p>
<p>Not all colleges look at extracurriculars. Most of the California State Universities do not, for example. And open admission community colleges obviously do not.</p>
<p>The importance of extracurriculars and other non-academic criteria gets magnified at highly selective schools that are flooded with applicants with near-maximum academic records. At such schools, a near-maximum academic record is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient, to have a chance of admission without a “hook”.</p>
<p>Agree with the previous posters. The top schools view ECs as differentiators.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>
<p>This information is outdated but back in 2006, some of the students from D1’s high school did not have great ECs but were able to get accepted to Yale, Princeton. I recognized one on CC and he stated so. He only started his EC in Senior year. I believe the high school is well known as an academic power house, he got 2400 and was at least top 1%. My daugher did not have earth shaken ECs but she got into top 30 base on her GPA. If her GPA was higher she would probably got into better schools so it’s not the ECs that made the difference. I agree things have changed since but not sure how much.</p>
<p>At what rank of schools do EC’s really start to matter?</p>