<p>Hi, I am a sophomore in high school with a 4.0 GPA and taking fairly advanced classes. I am a varsity wrestler, and I will be a captain my senior year. I volunteered 30 hours this past summer at Jewish preschool, and I will volunteer 30 hours this summer for a local political campaign. I also volunteered for 9 hours with the local youth wrestling club. I know that this is not as long of a list as most applicants, but I am very passionate about everything I do.</p>
<p>Well it depends on what schools you are trying to get into.</p>
<p>I just have some schools in mind, but nothing is set in stone yet. NYU, columbia, colgate, U-Mich, rochester, BU, WUSTL</p>
<p>you might want to find one other thing your’e interested in and pursue it heavily. </p>
<p>Your current ECs are will put you at a disadvantage for colleges like Columbia.</p>
<p>Oh yes, I also forgot that I am in MENS (Men Encouraging Non-violent Strength) club, Spanish Honors Society, and hopefully will be in NHS</p>
<p>varsity wrestler and captain is a very good ec, 60 hours of community service is good but nothing amazing. One or two more ecs of similar caliber/time commitment to wrestling that you would do during the off season would be very helpfull, but you should be ok for some of those schools if you keep up your grades and get high sats or acts. Especially if that 4.0 is unweighted. Also your only a sophomore so you could look for other ecs to join.</p>
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<p>This sounds good. I’m glad you’re not doing things haphazardly, and are trying to stick to things you love. Keep with it! Honestly, develop a good GPA and stellar test scores. That’s important to get into a public school like U-Michigan. </p>
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<p>I’m not sure I’d advise the OP to do more EC’s, maybe at most one more. Most people getting admitted even to the top EC-hunters like HYP tended to have 1-2 very solid ECs, and doing too many might water things down. Stellar grades should be emphasized for public schools, and generally many small prestigious schools. I can’t think of a school for which several more ECs actually would help. Just my take though.</p>
<p>I said one or two more not a lot more. And sports in highschool are seasonal usually. There are generally three sports seasons and many people do a different sport or significant activity each season all four years of highschool.</p>
<p>Now I do agree a smaller list of very dedicated activities is better than a large list of stuff one put zero time into. And the tc does seem very into wrestling so if he does wrestling stuff all year round that is probably fine for ecs as long as he communicates that to the admissions staff. But if he doesn’t do much wrestling related stuff when its not in season during highschool he would likely be competing with some people who did do things each season and then one or two more dedicated ecs would help.</p>
<p>For example I did three main activities when I was in highschool. marching band, swimming, and speech and debate. I put in a significant amount of time into each. and did all of them for at least 3 years, 2 of them all 4 years(didn’t start speech and debate till sophomore year). Now my friend only did swimming, but he was on a year round club swim team that took up tons of time all year, I would rate our ecs of similarly(if he hadn’t been a recruited athlete giving him a huge leg up). However had he only done swimming in the winter on the high school team he would be at a disadvantage comparatively.</p>
<p>I would also like to say that I didn’t mean to imply that your ecs are lacking and that you will be at a disadvantage. Varsity and captain of the wrestling team plus a respectable amount of community service and those honors societies is good enough to put you into competition at any school ec wise. Your gpa and sats scores will be most important factor, and if you have high gpa and sat scores then with your current ecs you will be in fit range for all of those schools you listed except maybe columbia since they have a 10% acceptance rate so are a reach for most applicants.</p>
<p>I am in fact doing wrestling basically year round. After the season ends in march, i take about two-three weeks off then I start with weight lifting and conditioning all summer. From September until the season starts I attend a wrestling school three days a week. I also will probably volunteer over 60 hours, those are just my base hours for NHS. Do you know how selective NYU is?</p>
<p>definitely communicate that you do wrestling stuff year round and not just during the season somewhere on your application.</p>
<p>And no I don’t really know a ton about how selective NYU is. I believe its pretty selective but not ridiculous. The acceptance rate in 2007 was 36% according to us news. Their website claims the fall 2008 number(wouldn’t this only be early applicants?) was 25%, and that the middle gpa presumably for either current freshmen or the whole school, it doesn’t specify, was 3.63 and sat scores middle 50% 1300-1440 with 70% of their class being in the top 10%.</p>
<p>I think the wrestling is a great EC; However, I always like to encourage students to have another more “academic” EC as well. Just a thought</p>
<p>I think the combo of wrestling and preschool is cool. YMMV.</p>