<p>I honestly don't get it. Why this push to be a star athlete, captain of the debate team, and a brilliant opera singer all while starting our own business? Why is a student with straight B's and "good" extracurriculars better than the student with straight A's and 5 AP Classes but not many extracurriculars? </p>
<p>I mean, isn't the whole point of college to prepare us for a career? And once we're in a career, no employer gives a crap about you being captain of the Daddy Soccer League or how many times a month you volunteer at a soup kitchen; they just want to see you do your job and do it well. And that's what school basically is right now: a full-time job. So why can't we just be really good at our jobs? Why this push for us to be "well-rounded"?</p>
<p>Most colleges and universities really don’t care much (if at all) about extracurricular activities. The reason you find so much discussion about them here, is that many of the places that students who post here are interested in really do pay attention to ECs.</p>
<p>And even if the places do care about ECs, it would be almost impossible for a student with straight B’s to be admitted instead of a student will stellar grades. ECs can give a boost, but not by that much.</p>
<p>Because schools are NOT jobs. Your analogy fails miserably. Universities are located on campuses. These campuses have lives of their own. ECs show what you can contribute to the campus. For instance, a straight-A student with no ECs is very boring because all he/she is going to do when he/she gets there is study and work. Now, an A/B student who runs track, plays the violin, and sings in an a-capella group is very compelling. He will presumably continue those activities on campus and contribute to the vibrant campus life by participating in athletics, orchestra, band, and a-capella singing. Additionally, volunteers will continue to enrich the campus and the surrounding community. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, colleges want interesting people. They are looking for representatives who will represent their university well in the outside world. A boring student is not going to reflect well upon a university. An interesting student who can contribute to the campus will boost the university’s reputation.</p>
<p>
Extreme case: recruited Ivy League football players. Take a look at their grades and SAT scores compared to the rest of the class.</p>
<p>The point of considering talent, activities, community involvement and leadership is to enable committees to make decisions between similarly qualified students. Many residential colleges are eager to find people who are more than just scholars. Their communities are more successful if there are many engaged, active leaders on campus. The model of a residential college requires a collaborative student body where learning and engagement is not just in the classroom. At many smaller schools, as between students with similar stats but dissimilar levels of engagement outside of class, the one who is a leader and active outside of class is more likely to be admitted.</p>
Either-or fallacy. Those are not the only options. A more realistic comparison would be a student with straight A’s and 5 AP Classes but not many ECs vs one that had the same academic record and one or two ECs that demonstrated real accomplishment or involvement with the life of the community. </p>
<p>If you think top colleges are reaching down to B students with good ECs, turning away those with stronger academic records, you are mistaken.
If you want to ensure you are turned down by top colleges, put some sentiment along those lines in your essays. Top colleges see themselves as developing one’s ability to think critically, to understand a branch of knowledge in depth, to be able to express oneself well. Skills they tout will be valuable in any career, to be sure, but suggest college is a refined trade-school and you go to the bottom of the app pile.</p>
<p>The vast majority of schools do not care about extracurricular activities. Only the super-selective ones even consider them. They consider EC’s because it’s hard to choose who to admit otherwise. Super-selective schools have thousands of qualified applicants, and it’s not exactly easy to choose from such a qualified group of applicants without more information. </p>
<p>If a school gets the following ten applicants, but can only accept 4, it’s pretty hard to decide which is better.
35 ACT / 3.8 GPA
2280 SAT / 3.7 GPA
2250 SAT / 3.95 GPA
36 ACT / 3.5 GPA
32 ACT / 4.0 GPA
2370 SAT / 3.6 GPA
34 ACT / 3.9 GPA
2200 SAT / 4.0 GPA
33 ACT / 3.75 GPA
31 ACT / 3.7 GPA</p>
<p>All of the above applicants are great, and it’s hard to pick the 4 best. But if you find out that some had great EC’s and lots of volunteer hours or overcame a lot of difficulties in life, but the others ONLY had the good grades/scores going for them, it’s easy to decide. </p>
<p>But again, very few colleges care about EC’s. Only the most selective ones, and it’s because they can’t make good decisions about applicants without them.</p>
<p>@mikemac Oh come on. Very few go to school just for the “glory of learning”. They go to get a good education that they can take with them into a career. People don’t go to medical school just to learn about medicine; they go because they plan on becoming DOCTORS. Yes you main learn valuable skills in college, but that’s not ultimately the “point” of college. </p>
<p>Most do not actually care that much (or at all) about extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Most that do care a lot of extracurriculars are trying to distinguish between a flood of applicants who have near maximum academic stats (i.e. HS GPA 4.0 or close to it in the most rigorous available course selections, standardized test scores close to the maximum possible). But you need near maximum academic stats to be in the running.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That generally does not happen, unless the extracurricular is playing a desired revenue-generating sport at an elite level. For the colleges that care a lot about “regular” extracurriculars, you need straight A grades or close to it in rigorous courses to even get to the point where your extracurriculars matter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, for nearly all college students. Even at the elite universities, where people make statements about idealizing learning for learning’s sake, many go there because that is the preferred route to lucrative investment banking and management consulting jobs. But that is probably not a good thing to actually write in an application essay.</p>
<p>OP, it really depends on what type of college you’re thinking about applying to in the first place. For instance, the point of a liberal arts college is NOT to prepare you for a career. That’s why you will only rarely find any vocational majors at a liberal arts college. The mission of those universities are to teach you to think critically so that you can do whatever you want coming out of the university. Those skills will be valuable whatever you decide to do - become a doctor, go to grad school, become a beggar on the streets, or live in your parents’ basement for the rest of your life. These are the type of schools that require strong commitment to ECs. </p>
<p>Then there are the other colleges. These prepare you to enter the workforce. They have many vocational majors, i.e. things from journalism and business all the way to welding and nursing. These are the colleges that don’t put much emphasis on ECs.</p>
<p>Not true. Even though many liberal arts subjects do not directly apply to specific jobs or careers (other than academic or research jobs in those subjects), people attend colleges to learn and practice skills (reading, writing, thinking, research, etc.) needed in various types of jobs, and to gain a credential (bachelor’s degree) that theoretically signals their accomplishment in learning and practicing those skills.</p>
You are making my point again. Liberal arts colleges teach you skills such as critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and analysis. These do not apply in SPECIFIC to ANY career. That’s why so many science majors go to Wall Street. If liberal arts degrees prepare you for certain jobs, then biology majors would be in dire straits indeed! Therefore, liberal arts college instill certain SKILLS in their graduates and so do NOT prepare them for any SPECIFIC career, i.e. journalism, auto repair, etc. That is the true essence of a liberal arts degree. Now, a purported liberal arts college may offer pre-professional degrees but that has never been the essence of a liberal arts degree. So, true.</p>
<p>Good answers. I’ll add this: your choices of activities and how you committed, what impact you had (even small; and this is distinguished from “titles,”) how you gained some practical experience in the arena of your potential major- but also how you experimented or went broad- shows a lot about how you think, your vision, perspective and judgment, energy and willingness, curiosity. Your ability to climb out of the same old/same old high school box. All highly valued, along with your ability to write a great essay that shows the same.</p>
<p>The schools that care about your whole picture care very much. Whether or not any individual agrees.</p>
<p>Of course, that does not prevent someone from majoring in a liberal arts subject for obvious pre-professional reasons:</p>
<p>Economics: as a substitute business major
Math or statistics: for finance or actuarial jobs
Biology: convenient for fulfilling pre-med requirements (even though no specific major is required for law school)
Political science, English: stereotypically common pre-law majors (even though no specific major is required for law school)</p>
<p>I’ll rephrase to make it more specific. Colleges do not prepare you for SPECIFIC careers. You are also not learning as much as developing or refining. If you’re not a total idiot, you already have critical reasoning skills. </p>
<p>Yes, biology majors have it pretty bad, I’ll give you that. But a lot of them end up on Wall Street, according to one of my friends who is a senior in my school’s department. Wall Street recruiters are heavily recruiting the STEM majors. </p>
<p>
Again, you’re making my point that a liberal arts degree prepares you for anything. People from the sciences going into finance/consulting, English majors going to med school, and any major going to grad school in another subject (usually closely related, but as long as you have the qualifications for the grad program, you don’t need to have majored in it). A liberal arts degree prepares you for all careers. So it prepares you for no careers, in specific, at least.</p>
<p>You are at Princeton, a target school for Wall Street recruiters, who appear to be less picky about major than about school (or sometimes a special highly selective division or major at a less selective school). Biology majors at non-elite schools do not have good Wall Street job prospects. Finance recruiters may go down a few ranks in school prestige for math and statistics majors more than for biology majors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The specific examples were for liberal arts majors commonly chosen for preparation for specific types of jobs or other post-graduation goals, rather than general skills preparation.</p>
<p>I stand by my claim. Liberal arts degrees are valued for their versatility. Also, you will see that the same characteristics that make science majors so attractive for careers completely unrelated to their majors hold for biology majors as well.
</p>
<p>Finally, while people choose specific majors under the illusion of “preparing” for a specific field, NONE of those majors are actually required to pursue those fields. That’s the beauty of a liberal arts degree. Science majors going into consulting, humanities majors going to med school, etc. Moot point.</p>
<p>Again, that’s Yale, where finance and consulting employers recruit regardless of major. At most universities in the US, students do not have the luxury of taking well paying finance and consulting jobs that come recruiting regardless of major.</p>
<p>In any case, biology has weaker job prospects than other science majors like math and statistics because some employers (including finance) value people with good math skills which math and statistics majors have in abundance, but biology majors are less likely to have. At schools a notch below Yale and Princeton in selectivity, the math and statistics majors are much more likely to get jobs in the finance industry than biology majors.</p>
Okay, let’s compare apples to apples here. True, at top universities, Wall Street firm recruit heavily. Among those students, the science and engineering students are a lot more heavily recruited than humanities/social science majors. That’s because these firms value certain traits that science majors have.
Presumably, science majors at ALL universities have these same traits. At least, I’m hoping that any self-respectable scientist will be able to organize data, model, and use the scientific method. These characteristics are by no means unique to an Ivy League education. Then, it will also follow that science/engineering majors will also have an advantage over their peers in non-top universities, though getting a top job will be difficult across the board. </p>
<p>Further, all science majors require some sort of math. I would be surprised if a biology major completed his/her undergraduate studies without completing some sort of calculus sequence. And math on Wall Street isn’t rocket science. </p>
<p>Every year, thousands of students enter college and major in Econ or Statistics, hoping to secure a job on Wall Street after graduation, but many of them end up without consulting/finance jobs.</p>
<p>To get back to the OP’s point: only a small subset of colleges care about ECs, but somehow it annoys people that they do. If you don’t like it, there are plenty of places, and very good ones, that don’t care about ECs: go there.
As to the other back-and-forth, it seems to me that college students can be more or less career-oriented, and this varies from one school to the next. I think it’s fair to say that the less competitive your school is, the more important it might be to make sure that you are getting skills that will pay off. A Harvard biology major may have a lot of opportunities that a bio major from a lower tier school may not have.</p>