<p>
Once you are in a career, no employer is going to care about your grade 11 history marks either.</p>
<p>Being well-rounded is overrated. If you can show a strong record of commitment to and achievement in one or two ECs, that is sufficient even for the few schools that care about such things.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Biology majors typically take a similar amount of math as business and non-PhD-bound economics majors. I.e. a year of calculus and statistics. Other science majors take considerably more math (multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and certainly more for math majors).</p>
<p>A look at the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15975553-post63.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15975553-post63.html</a> will show you how biology majors compare to other science majors at the same school for various schools. To assume that “all STEM majors have good job prospects” is to mislead yourself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The ones not at highly recruited schools are out of the running even before they start, since the desired jobs are school-prestige-conscious.</p>
<p>Quote:
Originally Posted by kitkat383838
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>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>This is not true for athletes. Even for non-revenue generating sports, schools need to field teams. Over a 3.5 and over a 28 ACT or 1900 SAT will put you in the running for any school if you are a good enough athlete, even sports like track, crew, swimming, volleyball.</p>
<p>I have to challenge the premise that college grades are necessarily more important than extracurriculars. Outside of academia and perhaps medicine, the people I know who became highly successful after college were all heavily involved in campus activities. The people who have won major creative awards, started or risen to the top of successful companies or had an impact on the public sphere were varsity athletes, club presidents, student government leaders. They were smart people with good grades, but they also had that extra spark that led them to push themselves more than those who simply spent their time hunched over a carrel in the library.</p>
<p>When I got to know the board members of my college I was surprised at the number of football players among the men on the board. It wasn’t because I went to a big football school, in fact, my college had an abysmal football record and the school had put very few resources into the football program. The college president had a reputation for caring very little for the sport. But football players seemed to be overrepresented among those from whom the college drew its board-professionally successful people with money and an interest in working pro bono for the good of the school. They were involved in college, involved in life beyond college, and, I would imagine, involved in high school life.</p>
<p>I don’t think the point of colleges is to prepare you for a career, but to educate you so that you will be well-prepared for whatever you choose to pursue.</p>
<p>Colleges don’t care if you’re well-rounded, either. They just want to know what distinguishes you from the next applicant with identical scores and grades. Looking at your ECs is one way of doing that. And if you’re slightly below the average applicant in terms of grades and scores, well, having a weird, off-the-wall EC that you are passionate about just might give you a boost.</p>
<p>
Biology majors take the same amount of math as Chemistry majors at my school - through Calc II (plus statistics). As for Chem, the Molecular Biology department suggests taking calculus through linear algebra, as they award departmental credit for multivariate and linear algebra. Your claim that “other science majors” take more math such as differential equations is wrong for Chemistry majors - increasingly wrong if you include the “soft” sciences like psychology, neuroscience, and sociology. Except for engineers, possibly math majors, and physics majors. Now, it makes sense that engineers, math majors, and physics majors take more math classes because their fields heavily involve math. </p>
<p>
Sure, this data is obviously going to be skewed, but it is the only sampling of job prospects for biology majors from Princeton that I could find. Several Wall Street jobs on there. Now you’re saying “Yeah, but Wall Street recruits there.” So let me pre-empt that by saying, yet again, to compare apples to apples. Fewer science majors will go to Wall Street from non-recruited schools simply because Wall Street firms didn’t recruit there; that doesn’t mean that those firms don’t value those skills. You could also start at a smaller consulting firm and work your way up if you don’t go to a top school. You have the same skill set and that’s going to be valued after you get in.</p>
<p>I really don’t think EC’s matter as much as some people make them out to on this board. Some people make it sound like EC’s are one of the absolute most important parts of an application, but most schools really don’t even care. Schools like Harvard, Yale, MIT etc may utilize them to a degree, but that’s simply because they need some type of distinguishing criteria to pick between the pool of applicants that all have nearly perfect stats.</p>
<p>A while back, someone posted a thread on here expressing their concern that ONLY being JV captain of the football team was going to make their application weaker. Why? Because they weren’t the VARSITY CAPTAIN. Really? That seems like a bit of an over obsessive concern. The odds of being accepted or denied at a given school on the basis of being JV captain, rather than varsity captain are virtually non-existent. This person was worried that they weren’t going to get into any good schools though, because of this tiny little insignificant concern.</p>
<p>Fact is, there are plenty of students getting into top schools that don’t really have anything in the way of EC’s, aside from being a member of a few school clubs. You do not need to eradicate hunger in Africa, and cure cancer to get accepted into a good school.</p>
<p>It’s not just highly selective colleges that treat ECs as important. For example, the CDS importance ratings for the ten private universities ranked 100+ on USNWR (starting at rank 100 and counting on from there) are below. Note that most of these less selective colleges ranked ECs as “important”, and all at least ranked them as considered. . </p>
<p>Illionis Insitute of Technology – Considered
Clarkson University – Important
Catholic University – Important
Duquesne University – Important
Howard University – Considered
New School – No info on CollegeData about “New School”
Seton Hall – Important
Depaul University – Important
Hofstra Univeristy — Important
Polytechnic Institute of NY – Considered</p>
<p>I think the key difference between highly selective colleges is I’d expect it’s common to get admitted to any of these less selective colleges without notable ECs. ECs are important, but the admit rate is high enough that apps can get in with just decent stats and nothing else noteworthy. However, at highly selective schools, stats alone are usually not enough.</p>
<p>As to why colleges consider ECs, colleges are often looking for vibrant individuals who will contribute to the campus life, like they did in HS. There is also a correlation with being passionate outside of the classroom as shown in accomplishing great things in ECs to accomplishing great things in college and beyond due to both activities depending on quality personality/character traits (something some college CDSs rank as more important than stats). If I were betting money on who in my HS class I’d expect to accomplish amazing things in life, I wouldn’t just choose the students who had the highest stats. Instead I’d emphasize personality traits over stats and would consider their history of what they accomplished outside of the classroom in ECs and awards.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with anything people have written on this thread.</p>
<p>However, I think it would be instructive to consider the point-of-view of selecting people that would likely be better as a colleague in the future. You can argue that involvement in ECs could be predictive of added value. For example, a varsity athlete who gets straight A’s is good at time management and has a lot of energy. However, it still is a different philosophy than selecting people to socially engineer a more interesting campus, and as a result, it likely would result in different decisions.</p>
<p>Colleges want people with strong ECs because they make the college a more attractive place for other students (and a better place to go to school). Most college students really enjoy spending some of their free time going to a cappella performances, orchestra concerts, dance recitals, theatre productions, and football games. They enjoy reading the school newspaper over breakfast and the literary magazine over coffee. Pray tell, who on earth is going to sing, dance, play the French horn, or be a running back if a school does not take kids who are dedicated to extracurricular activities?</p>
<p>
Not true for many high-level jobs. Many employers like people who were athletes; one of my i-banker friends said that he was the only non-athlete in his associate class. Legal employers all but demand (and some do demand) that their associates and partners be involved in the community. Aside from the fact that it looks good for the firm, it’s an outstanding networking opportunity.</p>
<p>Likewise, those who are strong leaders in their communities show promise as leaders within the business itself. A person who spearheads a large-scale fundraiser has demonstrated the basics of management ability and already gotten her feet wet. Employers do not want to teach you every skill out there, and they want to hire people who seek out opportunities to grow and learn. Hence, the adult version of extracurriculars.</p>
<p>ECs can teach you important skills necessary for the workplace. For example, sports and clubs can teach you the value of teamwork and getting along with people you may not necessarily like, how to help others improve their skills for the good of the team, and hard work and commitment to a greater good (the team). Artificial group projects in class do not create the same bond (especially when very short term) or allow the time to let relationships form, be challenged, etc. Think about someone who wants to become a manager: they need to know how to get along with a diverse group of people, help develop their team’s skills, and do what’s good for the department or business, not just what’s good for them. Some things can’t be taught from a book. </p>
<p>Another poster also mentioned the atmosphere of a campus; yes, some schools want an active, vibrate community to attract more students. They look for students who will both excel at their studies and contribute to the community. But not all colleges care: some are commuter schools and don’t have an active student body outside of class. You can tailor your college search based on what you want - and so can the “well rounded” students. No one is forcing you to compete with them for a school that may not be a good fit for you.</p>
<p>Here’s a slightly different slant. One recruiter we heard said they look for ec because they want students who get involved on campus. Too often students who live an hour or two away leave on weekends. Some schools have even evolved to the point where there are few friday classes. This results in a campus becoming a ghost town for three days a week. Word gets out, it gets unofficially demoted to community college status, fewer and fewer top candidates apply, and the overall quality suffers.</p>
<p>Colleges are not looking at applicants as isolated individuals but as contributors to the all-important mix on campus. Colleges may want another oboe player, an athlete, a math whiz, a prize-winning writer etc. The mix extends to socioeconomic status, ethnicity and geography.</p>
<p>Many colleges do not want a campus full of well-rounded students. Well-rounded students may be one element in the mix, but admissions people are often trying to fill campus with a wide variety of talents and interests and backgrounds so that the student body as a whole is well-rounded, so to speak.</p>
<p>College is becoming more and more about career, which I think it huge loss, but in these days of high college loans, many families do understandably pressure kids to know what they want to do for a job. I think our entire culture is changing rapidly with this. Personally, I think the best function of college is for young people to have 4 years to learn and explore, but that idea almost seems quaint now, except for the very rich. Too bad.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At the state school that I attended, chemistry majors have to take math through multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations, while most biology majors just have to take frosh calculus, or a one year sequence tailored for biology majors. Chemistry majors also take harder chemistry and physics courses than most biology majors.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here are more career surveys which show comparisons by major:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15975553-post63.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/15975553-post63.html</a></p>
<p>Examples:</p>
<p>MIT: <a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation12.pdf[/url]”>http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation12.pdf</a> page 23
Berkeley: <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a>
Virginia Tech: [Virginia</a> Tech Post-Graduation Report: Salaries reported](<a href=“http://www.career.vt.edu/scripts/PostGrad2006/Report/DetailReportSalaries.asp?College=00&Majors=Y&Cohort=2011-2012]Virginia”>http://www.career.vt.edu/scripts/PostGrad2006/Report/DetailReportSalaries.asp?College=00&Majors=Y&Cohort=2011-2012)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>However, 21 of the 23 campuses of the California State University (CSU) system do not consider ECs at all (except if the EC is a sport that attracts athletic recruiting attention). Frosh admission is based on qualifying courses completed in high school (or mastery of the subjects shown by standardized tests, higher level high school courses, or college courses), a formula of HS GPA and SAT CR+M or ACT score, major, state residency, and local area residency.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Less selective schools may also have HS GPA and test score thresholds where ECs do not matter, while using ECs only where the academic stats are near the margin of admit or reject. An example from your list is Howard, where high enough levels of HS GPA and test scores gain automatic admission with scholarship as listed on the web site.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Announcement 2013-14](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/ua/departmentsprograms/chm/]Undergraduate”>http://www.princeton.edu/ua/departmentsprograms/chm/)</p>
<p>[Princeton</a> University Molecular Biology - Undergraduate Requirements](<a href=“http://molbio.princeton.edu/undergraduate/requirements]Princeton”>http://molbio.princeton.edu/undergraduate/requirements)</p>
<p>What kind of non-elite college would be confident enough about filling in all the necessary EC spots not to have to explicitly look for specific ECs in the applicant pool?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or is it more specifically lacrosse?</p>
<p>[Wall</a> Street’s Lacrosse Mafia - Businessweek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>
<p>Most of the lower tier colleges don’t care about EC’s, apparently. It’s only at top tier schools like HYPSM where EC’s matter, simply because schools like that have many applicants who have stellar GPA’s and SAT/ACT scores and need some way to distinguish the applicants.</p>
<p>Things that make a successful career:
(0) Becoming good at what you do
(1) Being willing to spend the time exercising your skills to gather some sort of outcome or product
(2) Being a good leader/having necessary social skills</p>
<p>What do you think high school academics shows? Most high schools don’t have rigorous enough academics to qualify for (0) for selective colleges. You don’t do anything impactful by just getting A’s in your classes. And you don’t display leadership by reading.</p>
<p>Extracurriculars are a good place to show that you are willing to work hard, that you can work effectively, and that you have the leadership potential to get others to think your work is useful enough to continue. Those are all things that selective colleges want to know before investing in you. (Note: they do not have to be in equal amounts.)</p>
<p>And as was already pointed out, you don’t have to choose between academics and extracurriculars.</p>