<p>Certainly they do carry some weight, but not to the degree that people make it out to sound. Sure, it does show that you’re actively participating in things at your school, or other activities outside of school, but I really think it has relatively little bearing on the type of student that you are. Unless you have some truly extraordinary EC’s, I can’t see it making that much of a difference. An admissions decision isn’t going to ride on whether or not you were the president of your high schools anime club, or spent an hour a week at a soup kitchen. If you’ve won national science olympiads, or created some new kind of technology, those EC’s will actually be significant, but they are also things that are likely going to be directly related to your academic ability. Being the president of the Magic: The Gathering club doesn’t really show much in the way of your academic ability, and in fact may show the opposite.</p>
<p>Colleges certainly do want students with varied interests, but that is going to happen by default. People by nature have a wide array of interests, and anytime you have a large group of people, you are bound to have a huge variety of different hobbies and passions. Aside from things like trying to recruit sports players, or people for school bands, I can’t see EC’s as really being a significant factor in an admissions decision. With highly selective schools they will carry more weight, but that’s because they’re being forced to choose between a pool of highly qualified applicants. For the vast majority of colleges in the country though, it’s not going to be a big consideration.</p>
<p>My personal experience has been that if a kid has done something truly outstanding while in HS, the colleges will take notice. I’m not talking about being captain of the varsity football team, but being at the top of the heap at a national level. Winning a national science competition, being a nationally ranked athlete, or placing at the top in national music competitions shows the college that this person has drive and will do what it takes to get to the top, no matter what they eventually do for a living. Over the years I’ve known several kids who have attained that level, and they are generally recruited heavily by top colleges. </p>
<p>I alway assumed that is to because colleges love to brag about their alumni, and what’s the best way to assure they get more brag worthy alumni? Recruit students who have proven to have the drive to be outstanding.</p>
<p>Fine. And most of CC will agree with you. While they struggle to understand what holistic is about. There will always be the tale available of a kid who didn’t do much or never made it to varsity captain or head of student government, but still got into the desired college.</p>
<p>There is a quick assumption all this is about sameness or extreme uniqueness. Or the magic of having high stats. And because if that, many kids who are top academic performers fail to understand how their full applications are viewed. And, without that, they cannot understand how to put their best foot forward. But they can complain later, make assumptions about what is and isn’t of value. So be it.</p>
<p>The college is more than academics. It is a transition into the real world. The real test of college education would be, in my opinion, how well it prepares you for the real world. One of the many reasons why so many of us take the tough decision to dole out so much money on expensive college education for our children is the fact that end game in today’s world is success. And by success I mean many things most importantly ‘being ready to take on the world’. </p>
<p>The real world adjustment and succees will be driven by knowledge, but much more than that it would require skills like man mangement, leadership, negotiation, administration, planning, budgeting, interviewing, team player, presentation…and so on and so forth. The students who involve themselves in ECs learn these on an ongoing basis and so they ‘hit the ground running’ as they say. I believe that explains the emphasis on ECs. The ECs enable and help discover strenghths outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>If the EC’s in question are truly extraordinary, then they can certainly make a difference. But, most EC’s are not truly extraordinary. </p>
<p>Is something like being Varsity Captain of the football team really that important? Sure, it’s absolutely something that one should be proud of. However, there are nearly 25,000 high schools in this country, a good chunk of which have football teams with Varsity Captains. That’s a couple tens of thousands of varsity captains applying to college every year. </p>
<p>Other EC’s like winning national music competitions, inventing some new technology, winning national science competitions etc, are EC’s that only a handful of people are going to have. These are things that truly do show drive and motivation. </p>
<p>Being a member of the chess club isn’t really that significant. Winning national chess tournaments? Now that IS significant. There are tens of thousands of chess club members applying for college every year. But being a member of a chess club doesn’t really demonstrate anything. Winning national tournaments shows dedication and drive.</p>
<p>Exactly. Being the captain of the football team really means very little. I was never the sports person in high school, but from what I’ve gathered, the captain is basically just the best person on the team generally. They don’t actually get involved in any real “leadership.” </p>
<p>Colleges know this. </p>
<p>A while back, someone posted a thread on here expressing their concern that their application was going to be weak because they were only JV captain, rather than varsity captain. Concerns like that just come off as ridiculous to me.</p>
<p>But being one of a handful isn’t everything. Being ultra unique isn’t. It’s what your ECs show about you. The sum total, not that one thing. And, real leadership is isn’t exclusively about what or whom you “lead.” It is about a quality that distinguishes you. So, heading the pep rally committee, whether you oversee 10 kids or 100, isn’t it. Sometimes, the kid who finds opportunities or adds to his small role is showing more than the ones with empty titles.</p>
<p>Even math geniuses need to do more. We have had some extraordinary achievers no one felt compelled to admit, because they were satisfied with unilateral. This is about balance and what that shows. And more.</p>
<p>Some say, oh, that sounds like formula- do this AND do that. Fine by me. If the kid experiences it and can present it well, he is ahead of others who just think what makes them bmoc at the hs is the be all and end all. That’s so limited.</p>
<p>another point that I don’t think has been mentioned…colleges are also using ECs as a way to make sure that a student that is admitted is not already at the outer limits of academic ability. Some students who get straight A’s in high school by virtue of doing nothing but study, study, study–grubbing for every available extra credit point, etc–sometimes find themselves overwhelmed when they get to campus. They have used every bit of what they have to get there and have no reserves in their tank.</p>
<p>These students get to campus, and all of a sudden they are competing against students who also had excellent transcripts–but achieved those excellent transcripts while also having a rich extra curricular life. Or–horrors–some students who had a slightly less illustrious high school transcript because they slacked a bit, and got an A- or B+ here or there. These other students have “reserves” they can call on as they kick in to high academic gear.</p>
<p>I think much of this is speculation as no one here is particularly qualified to say what each particular school is looking for in their applicants. Certainly one can search the CDS to see what each school lists as important, but that can even be suspect. I will offer an example.</p>
<p>A school my D is interested in claims that “demonstrated interest” carries no weight. We visited the school and met with our counselor who also mentioned that demonstrated interest carried no weight. He then traveled to our area and we went to the event. After talking with my D again he claimed there was no advantage to showing interest. THEN as we were leaving he told my D that he was looking forward to reading her app because its always nice to be able to put a face with the app! Obviously, AdComs are people and are more comfortable with other people they feel they know. Same with EC’s. here’s another example. My D is a two sport V athlete. We met with our admissions rep at another school who was also a two sport V athlete and he came right out and told us that he gravitates toward athletes in the app process because he understands the time, effort, and heart and soul poured into being an athlete and a great student. So the bottom line is that you never really know what aspect of your app may catch the attention of the AdCom reading it. Still a human process.</p>
<p>The historic reason for looking at EC may surprise you. Acccording to Karabel’s The Chosen:</p>
<p>“In The Chosen, Karabel chronicles the admissions policies of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton over the course of the twentieth century, describing how new admissions criteria—including letters of recommendation, athletic and extracurricular achievements, and interviews, in addition to a student’s academic credentials—were first introduced in the 1920s in an effort to limit the number of Jewish students.”</p>
<p>Holistic admissions continues to this day as a convenient tool with which to “form” a class, by subtle tweaks to weights given to various components, including EC.</p>
<p>At the tippy top schools, I don’t think anyone’s really arguing that EC’s don’t matter. In those highly selective schools, they certainly do. They serve as a means of distinguishing between the pool of applicants with 4.0’s and 36/2400 test scores. Beyond the very top schools though, they are going to matter less and less. Many schools state outright that they do not consider them.</p>
<p>Because if you’ve actually been in school lately, you’d notice it’s not hard to get a 4.0 unweighted and 2300+ SAT/35+ ACT with all the resources available.</p>
<p>I wasn’t, it is a lot easier to score well on the SAT today than it was 20 years ago. And you don’t necessarily even have to take classes. I just self studied and did like 15-20 practice tests and got a reasonably high score. But I know that I would have scored far lower if I just tried to do math problems/read random stories with hard vocabulary to try and prepare for the test. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the test is scored on a curve if more people answer every question correctly, because you can’t push a 100 to a 95% just like you can’t push a 2400 down to a 2300.</p>
<p>So as it becomes easier for people who want to do well on the SAT (which just requires that you practice it a lot), you have to look for other high achievement indicators.</p>
<p>Admissions officers aren’t necessarily looking for a long list of extracurricular activities. They are looking to see whether you have been able to commit yourself long-term to perhaps one or two activities that matter a great deal to you. They are looking to see whether you have assumed leadership roles within these organizations.</p>
<p>Going to university is a long-term commitment. Universities want to see that you can handle this. Additionally, schools invest quite a great deal of money in student programming. They want to admit students who will take advantage of the manifold opportunities on campus. A strong extracurricular activity list with a few long-term commitments gives admissions officers a clue about the clubs you’ll join and the role you’ll play on campus.</p>
<p>The activities you explore in high school teach you management, leadership, and commitment–all skills that employers (and admissions officers) value.</p>
<p>I think that ECs, recommendations and essays are all important because it gives the student a chance to show what he’s really like. Even highly polished and cultivated essays can be unintentionally revealing, and a kid’s choice of what to do with his time fills in the blanks a little. So you have 4.0 and 2300? What else are you? Every year some kids with perfect stats don’t get in to places they–and everyone else–think they “should,” and it has to be because there’s something in the record that sounds off. You can be very intelligent and crashingly dull. So some ECs are phenomenal–being on the Olympic team is good, or winning Intel–and they matter because they’re so over-the-top amazing, and yes, they do bring up the balance for a kid with lower stats. </p>
<p>But for the typical kid trying to get into a “top college,” ECs are only going to matter if his stats are already high, and he’s up against another kid with similar stats, who comes across as a more interesting (talented, dedicated, selfless, quirky) person. But stats are also less absolute than many people think–a GPA is a nice, quantifiable measure, except that it’s not; I don’t think the standard GPA that people like to quote is as important as the courseload, and even then a kid who sticks with a subject even if he’s not doing well might be more impressive than one who just cruises. And everyone knows that SAT scores can be stroked. So what it boils down to, is that if a kid with Bs and 2200 gets in over a 4.0 and 2400, it’s probably not that the kid with Bs was captain of his team. It’s probably that he was captain of his team because he’s a great kid, and that showed.</p>