I have honestly done all my extracurriculars and I put in hard work. In my college app, one of my extracurriculars is 200 hrs the entire school yr. Another is 100 hrs the entire school yr. Also another 100 for track. Then I have a few clubs which I put in as 50 hours. Does this look normal? Will colleges think I’m lying? Does this look like a red flag? I have done all my extracurriculars, but I don’t want it to look like I am lying or something.
No.
Athletic recruits, as an example, can easily have 1000+ hours in his/her sport 1 year. Yours is fine.
@skieurope Oh alright thanks man! I really thought my application would be an outlier for some reason. I’m always active.
No
Not to mention that 200 hours over a 40 week school year is five hours per week, which is totally normal.
If we assume that your school year is 35 weeks long, then 500 hours is 14 hours per week, which is two hours a day, including weekends. I mean, it’s a lot, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable. I think you’ll be fine, especially if your counselor and teacher recommendations confirm what you put on the common app (or whatever application you’re using).
Nope, this won’t raise a red flag. Stuff that raises red flags include:
-Having tons of leadership positions (i.e. President of 7 clubs)
-Having Inconsistent information between you and your guidance counselor/teachers (i.e. if you started the school’s Mathematics Club, you’d expect either a math teacher or the GC to comment on it).
-When the number of hours is literally impossible. As mentioned above, some EC’s, like sports, can take up tens of hours per week. But if the hour count is so large that your whole life is school, EC’s, and then two hours of sleep, something seems out of place.