<p>I am a rising senior, and have pretty high grades and scores. My parents, however, think I don't have enough EC's for some of the colleges I want to apply to. These are my EC"s so far:</p>
<ol>
<li>Brazilian jiu-Jitsu, for 4 years (I had to stop after 10th grade for reasons outside my control, as the classes were in the middle of the night and in a rather dangerous area)</li>
<li>Israeli Krav Maga for 2 years (Same as Above)</li>
<li>Politics Club, Junior and Senior Year</li>
<li>Yearbook Editor, Sophmore and Senior Year</li>
<li>Newspaper Editor, Senior Year</li>
<li>Hunting (?), Senior and Junior Year</li>
<li>Tutored kids extensively in Junior and Senior Year</li>
<li>Camp Counselor in Summer before 10th grade</li>
<li>Writing Seminar Counselor before 12th grade</li>
<li>I was qualified for an award as a top student of the state I live in</li>
<li>I have received awards for outstanding performance on the National Latin Exam every year since 9th grade, and probably will next year. </li>
</ol>
<p>Note: I devoted about 5 hours to Jiu-Jitsu and Krav Maga each week every week while I was learning both. Also, my school really has nothing besides sports. Yearbook, Politics, and Newspaper are probably about 70% of the extra circulars offered, if colleges take that into consideration. Would these EC's hold me back at these colleges:
1. University of Chicago
2. College of William and Mary
3. UVA </p>
<p>Thank you for reading this rather long post!</p>
<p>It’s not so much the number of the ECs as much as your commitment to them and how your passions come through to the officers. It’s hard to make this passion come through on your applications, but if you’re doing these because you care about them, you’ve achieved something through them, and this is clear in some way on your apps, they can be pluses.</p>
<p>I’m no admissions officer, so I can’t speak for your case in particular, but there’s a thread around here somewhere where students who had only 1 EC discuss their results, and many of them seem quite good because of their passion for that EC.</p>
<p>I took classes from a “black-belt” (they don’t use belts in krav maga and levels instead, as you might know, but he was the equivalent) who was previously an army ranger, in maryland. He eventually quit working there shortly after I quit, apparently due to “legal” concerns with the guy who ran the whole thing. You seem remarkably knowledgeable about krav maga though, how do you know about it? I’m just asking because most people have no idea what it is. They think its some form of karate or something like that.</p>
<p>I go to W&M and I think you have a good chance. They seem to like high-achieving students who are also very interesting out of the classroom. It doesn’t matter that your school doesn’t have exciting extracurriculars if you do cool things like jiu jitsu and krav maga on your own time! From what I know of UVA, they’d say the same thing, though UVA is more selective than W&M just because it gets more out of state attention.</p>
<p>Awhile back I was looking into picking a martial arts. I’m sort of a bum, so it fell through, but I did do my research, and Krav Maga seemed the coolest. Your talking about the Israeli martial art right? </p>
<p>As for EC’s, its better to focus on a few things your very passionate about, then to simply list a bunch of hours and stuff. Colleges look for things that make you an interesting person, and volunteering for 300 hours just to look good does not make you one. </p>
<p>If you focus on your passions, and convey that in your application process, youll look fine.</p>
<p>Yeah, krav maga is what the Israeli army developed and teaches. It was pretty awesome stuff, I highly recommend it if you want to get in shape, learn some cool martial arts quickly, or both. </p>
<p>What do you mean by hunting? That’s a hobby man, not an EC, as far as I can tell. Otherwise the entire state of Wisconsin would have an additional passionate EC to put on their Apps.</p>
<p>^ actually, i highly doubt they’d take hobbies as ECs</p>
<p>people don’t list things like working out, hunting, video games, reading, etc. as ECs
if you are in some kind of hunting club then i guess that’d work</p>
<p>Technically it’s an EC (in that it’s done outside of the classroom), but it doesn’t add much to a college campus. To me, it’s sort of in the video game category.</p>