There are many people who gave me an advice to do what I truly want to do and become very active and dedicated, and that this will get me into a good college. So if I do clubs that I am uninterested but looks good on application, does that mean it would actually look bad on application? Is there like a part of common app where I have to give a detailed description about what I had contributed for the club?
Under each common app activity, you get 150 characters to explain what you did.
Also, some schools have a short supplementary essay on what you did for a particular extracurricular activity.
So, if you say you were a part of Key Club, but wrote nothing really meaningful in the description box, that would not look very good.
Colleges would rather you put a lot of effort into a few clubs then join a whole bunch of clubs and not really do anything in those clubs. A lot of colleges will give you spaces to talk about your ECs.
This really only matters at very selective schools. There are many good colleges that don’t care about ECs.
It’s not just very selective schools that care about your ECs. Look on the schools’ website to see ho much consideration they give it. But no, do not join something just to pad your resume. Hopefully you have a passion about something. Or work. That’s fine too.
In general colleges want to accept students who will not only do well academically but will also help to create a vibrant campus life. No college wants a campus filled with students who only go to class and then sit in the library and study. Involvement in HS ECs is a way to gauge if a student will be willing to get involved on a college campus.
You don’t need to be involved in a ton of things – just find one or two activities you care about. And if school based ECs don’t interest you look towards out of school activities. Anything you do in or out of school is an EC…if you volunteer at a hospital, a church, a library, a soup kitchen etc. that all counts as well. In all honesty, don’t do it for college admissions, get involved in some activities as a way to move out of your comfort zone a bit and grow as a person.
That said, a number of the huge schools are more stat driven in admission due to the sheer number of applications that must be processed. But ECs are one element of many college admission processes.